


Imitation of Life

by Sarah T (SarahT), SarahT



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 00:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11725494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/SarahT
Summary: Twenty years after the conviction in the shocking Victor Trevor murder case, a detective inspector investigates another death at the Musgrave estate.  He's not convinced it's as straightforward as it seems...





	Imitation of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Spike for endless betaing and preventing me from quitting several times, D. for many helpful comments, and Anarfea for encouragement to a very stuck acquaintance.
> 
> I originally posted random chunks of this story on my tumblr. If you're still curious after reading, there's [a scene I had to cut there](https://harriet-spy.tumblr.com/post/158096030583/this-story-would-have-required-too-much-heavy).

Greg pulled his car over to join the little group gathered in the long, gently curving driveway that led to the house.It was striking, a grey Elizabethan that, with the odd projections and bristling chimneys it had accumulated and forgotten the use of over the years, seemed to have entirely lost the plot of relating to the outside world.He glanced at the folders tossed on the passenger seat before climbing out and grimaced.A three-hour drive into the country based on a call from a boffin.Even as much as he’d wanted to get away from London recently, he must be desperate. 

“Detective Inspector?Detective Sergeant Pennington,” the officer in charge of the investigation, a sleepy-looking man with scraggly brown hair, said, coming forward to shake his hand.“You think there’s a connection to some killings in London?”

His tone was skeptical.He was probably afraid of losing control of the case.Greg didn’t want to start a row, not based on what he had at the moment.“Well, SCAS does.”

“What about you?”

“I never put much stock in profilers,” Greg said.“You know.‘Your killer is a white male in his thirties, loner, angry at society.’Thanks, lads.But my murders are almost two years old, and one of them was the niece of a peer.I can’t even say for sure they’re connected.I’m ready to try psychics next.”

Pennington nodded, turning to lead him off the road.“Fair enough.But this is probably just a local dispute gone bad.The victim’s well-known around here as a shady character.”

“Drugs?”

“Yes.”Greg listened as the other officer sketched out the story.The victim, one Phil Dorchester, had dropped out of view over a month ago, not that anyone had minded.Hikers trespassing on the estate found the body in a little ravine.The only unusual feature—what had caught SCAS’s attention—was the burns on his arms and hands.That looked like torture, which seemed extreme for a two-bit dealer. 

“But someone takes enough meth long enough, who knows what they’ll do?” Pennington concluded.

“Any connection to the estate?”

“Not a chance.Who would dump a body on their own property?”

“Someone arrogant, maybe?Who thought the location would put them beyond suspicion.Who lives here?”

“The Holmeses,” Pennington said, as if that meant something.

Well, it didn’t to Greg.“Did they know him?Maybe buy from him?”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll need to talk to them.”

Pennington stopped.“Look.This family has been through a lot over the years.We’ve already spoken to them, there’s no need to pester them based on somebody from SCAS having a vision.”

People with political influence, then.“Come on, I just need to rule them out for the London murders.Who _are_ they?”

Pennington frowned, but said, “Brother and sister.Mid-twenties.”

Odd.That didn’t sound like the usual people-above-suspicion.

“They own the place?” 

“Their parents died several years back in a car accident.Kids have been on their own ever since.Like I said, they’ve been through a lot.”

“SCAS mentioned there’d been other deaths on the property.”

“Yes, the mother’s brother committed suicide here in the mid-eighties.Nothing suspicious about it.He was some kind of poof, jumped off the roof in women’s clothing.”

“Huh.And then there was a kid?”

“Even earlier.The brother’s friend, only six.Drowned by another brother, the oldest.That one’s still in custody.”

“Jesus.”Greg shook his head.“That _is_ a lot.”

“Yes.But you can see there’s no connection to this case.Do you really need to talk to them?”

“I’ll be gentle,” Greg said, a little dryly.“I promise.”

  


The music was harsh and discordant, and, though it didn’t seem to keep time, it still had a nightmare metronome quality to it, like some clockwork mechanism jerking horribly forward.Greg glanced at Pennington, raising his eyebrows, but Pennington’s expression remained relaxed as they approached the double doors.

Well.Pennington didn’t exactly _look_ like a fan of modern music, but Greg guessed you never knew.

The music broke off just before they entered the large, Edwardian-looking drawing room.As Pennington opened the doors, Greg saw a young man move to perch on the arm of a chair a young woman was sitting in, settling his hand on her shoulder.They were both dark-haired and dressed all in white, which had a weirdly clashing effect that meant it took a minute before he could really register their faces.

“Miss Euros Holmes, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, this is Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Pennington said.

Euros and Sherlock Holmes.Good God.Euros was regarding them with a blank expression.“All the way from London,” she said.“How flattering.”

“How did you know that?” Greg asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun by telling,” she said.Sherlock smiled, very slightly.

He found he was still looking at their faces.With each move of their heads, each shift in the light, the proportion of their features seemed to change, their strong brows and cheekbones altering their relations.It felt like he was looking at one of those Picasso paintings, with nose and eyes and mouth all piled up together and the wrong size and angle to each other.

He shook himself. 

“It’s true, I’m with the Met,” he said, pulling out his notebook.“And as I did come all this way, I have some questions.”

“You can go, Sergeant,” Euros said.

To Greg’s surprise, Pennington did, without another word.How much influence could these two possibly have?

“What do you two do?” he asked.

“Our parents left us a private income.”

“No profession, no charities?You’re both awfully young to do nothing at all.”

“Ah,” she said.“I see.You think it will help you understand. Among other experiments, I compose.”She nodded at Sherlock.“He plays.”

Artists.Eccentrics.Fantastic.“Oh.Professionally?”

“As I said, Detective Inspector, we have no need for income.”

Still not a flicker of expression.He supposed he could get the rest of the background from Pennington.Though now he was even more puzzled about why he was being so deferential. 

“When was the last time you were in London, Miss Holmes?”

“Euros,” she said.“A few months ago.We prefer Musgrave, but we do go down on occasion, for the experience.”

“And you, Mr. Holmes?”

“The same for Sherlock,” she said.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to hear from both of you.”

“That’s correct,” Sherlock said.He had a startling deep baritone, yet another disconcerting effect.

“We’re inseparable.”

Euros packed a remarkable amount of dry condescension into the two words, as if she was both insulted and vaguely embarrassed for him that he didn’t know.Greg let it roll off.

“Well, how about a year and a half ago?In April?”

She tilted her head slightly, the only sign of any curiosity about the question.“It’s possible.There was a Schoenberg concert at the LSO which we attended.Perhaps it was in April.”

“Where did you stay?”

“We have a flat in Islington.”

“Did you ever hear of a man named Archibald Hughes?Or a woman named Caroline Devere?”

“No.”

“I take it these were the other victims of the serial killer?” Sherlock put in.Euros looked at him, still without visible emotion.

Greg frowned.Had Pennington told them?“Who said there was a serial killer?”

“Oh, have I spoiled your surprise?” Sherlock said.“Were we not supposed to be able to guess?”

“That’s not most people’s first guess when I start asking them questions like that, no.”

Euros smiled—to herself, as if he weren’t even in the room, as if she could have her amusement privately no matter who was there.“Inspector Lestrade,” she said, “we are as far from ‘most people’ as it is humanly possible to be.Perhaps further.”

He snapped his notebook shut, irritated.“Runs in the family, does it?”

For a second, he regretted the remark.It wasn’t exactly appropriate.But Euros only smiled again.“Dearest _darling_ Mycroft did set a standard.But, really, we’re quite beyond _him_ , too.”

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“Only that we’re far cleverer,” she said.“We’d never get caught.”

“If you were to kill someone.”

“Why, yes…”

Her voice was calm and reasonable.She held his eyes with perfect composure, the dry humor of a moment before draining away.Then something further and indescribable draining from her face, til it seemed like a parody of humanity put on by something much more terrible that had momentarily forgotten to pretend.Greg felt sweat prickle his forearms.He swallowed, but he didn’t look away.

“… _if_ we were to kill someone.Or, even, many people,” she continued, and the lights flickered on behind her eyes again.By comparison, her face now seemed animated.By comparison.“Which, of course, we have no reason to.”

The sense of relief was so strong he almost ended the interview there, but instead he tightened his fingers on the notebook.“Did Mycroft have a reason?”

She looked up at Sherlock and put her hand over his.“Oh, the best.”

“What was that?”

“Sherlock and his friend wouldn’t play the way Mycroft wanted to.”

He glanced involuntarily at Sherlock, who was now staring quietly into her eyes as if Greg wasn’t even in the room.“You think that’s a good reason to kill someone?”

“Conventional morality is all arbitrary in the end, Detective Inspector.Judging by the consequences alone, it was quitepowerful.”

“Right, then.”His unease recoiled abruptly into disgust.“Thanks for your time, Euros, Sherlock.”

“Hurry back to London,” she said.“You can’t afford to be away for long.Your wife has ceased to love you.”

“How—“He stopped himself.“I’m aware of that, thanks.Seeing as we’ve recently separated.”

He turned and left the room, not waiting for a response.

  


Greg had never been so glad to get away from a crime scene in his life.But the queasiness pursued him all the way back to London.Not just queasiness.The sense of something unnatural radiating out from Sherlock and, especially, Euros.It felt like he’d had a bone dislocated, only in his brain.

He’d met people before who’d thought it would be fun to play games with the police.Most of them were no worse than annoying, or else pathetic.Some of them actually were criminals, some of them were only bored or lonely or whatever it was that made you drop hints to the cops that you’d done the horrible thing in question.It was just another form of lie to decipher, really.But those two…

Greg had never actually handled a serial killer case before.He hadn’t been at all sure when he went up that it _was_ a serial killer case, as opposed to a false alarm raised by a bunch of anoraks.But those two didn’t need deciphering, they needed _believing_. 

Pennington hadn’t believed.“A little eccentric, maybe, but what can you expect, under the circumstances?” he’d said, when Greg had ventured a doubt.

He sounded calm, almost relaxed, and that had only made Greg even more alarmed.For a second, he wondered if he’d stumbled into some psychological-horror-movie plot line, chasing a monster only he could see.

But, no, they really were standing over a little brook, staring down at flags and markers that indicated where the late unlamented Phil Dorchester had been found.There was nothing more real than a crime scene.Greg shook his head.This case plainly wasn’t going to get cleared locally.“All right.Send me your report as soon as it’s done, yeah?”

Pennington shrugged.“Sure.”

Greg had just managed to avoid looking like he was fleeing.

  


He almost called Jenny when he got back, but hung up while the phone was still ringing.They were apart now, he couldn’t exactly go asking her to hold his hand every time a case got weird.He’d call her after he solved this one.She’d probably see him in the paper, be wondering how he was doing, anyway.That would be better.More dignified. 

Three days later, his initial, urgent follow-ups on Musgrave hadn’t yielded much.The Schoenberg concert had been just two days after the deaths of his London victims.But CCTV review hadn’t gotten him anywhere, and it wasn’t exactly a crime to attend the LSO.He wouldn’t get access to phone or bank records based on what he had.And, that far back, tracing their movements through witnesses was going to be impossible.

He did some research, poking gingerly at Google.“Sherlock Holmes” brought up practically nothing.Euros, though, had more results, and they were strange.There was a review of a performance of one of her pieces by a well-known violinist who had stopped mid-work and smashed his instrument.The man hadn’t played again for eight months.But music seemed to be only the beginning.There was a flurry of articles and blog posts about a paper she’d submitted to a leading physics journal in which, as far as he could gather, although she had no formal education in the subject, she’d identified some fundamental inconsistency in the understanding of gravitation within quantum field theory—whatever that meant—that had thrown the field into chaos.And she’d published, privately, a study of Linear A that “demolished all attempts to identify the script with a known ancient language”—again, whatever that meant.That one had resulted in the resignation of a professor from a tenured chair at an Ivy League university.Each of the fields was obscure enough on its own that Greg wasn’t sure anyone else had made the connection between the various “E. Holmes” authors, but it sure did look as if she was fond of smashing the crockery wherever she went.

So, she was a genius in subjects so obscure that Greg didn’t even understand what was important about them.But upsetting professors wasn’t a crime.The shock of the interview was beginning to fade in his mind, and doubt crept in.The events themselves seemed unlikely (had she _really_ said all that?), his emotional reactions to them improbably intense, so much so that their vividness itself seemed like evidence they were imaginary.It wasn’t like him to wind himself up over suspects, but he was still upset about Jenny, he really wanted to solve these cases, maybe…

Then Pennington’s report came. It read like he’d been lobotomized.All routine boxes checked, no sense whatever made.Even if he hadn’t been involved, the report would have irritated Greg on general principle—it just wasn’t workmanlike.And it barely even mentioned the Holmes siblings. But it included a picture of Musgrave in all its convoluted glory.Glancing at it was like being slapped, the deep unease rising to the surface in response as strong as it had been that day.There was something _wrong_ there. 

He went for coffee, and when he came back, he found two more manila folders on his desk, clipped to a note.He picked them up.From SCAS.They’d been digging further and found more killings that matched the pattern: the burns, the extreme care with which the killer avoided leaving evidence. 

More killings, but no hints about the killer.Greg squashed his irritation—for over a year, he’d been feeling more like an idiot daily, and now these swots were jumping in like it was easy—and read the reports late into the evening.When he was done, he dropped the last one on his desk.Facts, lots of facts, and nothing useful.Nothing that obviously connected the killings to the Holmes siblings, and he would need more before he tried a reinterview.Meanwhile…five deaths over three years, and who knew how many more might be coming.

He rubbed his hand over his face.He was going to have to try something else.Something drastic. 

  


In the end, all prisons were the same.People never understood how much of it was just petty bureaucracy—uncomfortable folding chairs, schedules that were designed for maximum inconvenience, grumpy, burned-out staff.Even this place, Greg thought, this above-and-beyond-maximum-security Sherrinford, wasn’t all that different.Sure, the approach was unprecedented.He’d never had to take a copter ride over a grim and choppy North Sea to a remote island to see a prisoner before.But there he was, cooling his heels in a dreary waiting room that could’ve come right out of Belmarsh.

“Mycroft Holmes?” the liaison had said over the phone.“Not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Too much of a security risk.”

He’d snorted.“Come on.I _have_ interviewed prisoners before, you know.”

“Holmes is unique.”

“Look, I understand, he was a child killer, he killed three more people in custody, but the last one was nearly twenty years ago, wasn’t it?I’m not asking to waltz with him.Just to get some background.”

They’d gone around a few more times, which was a few more times than the situation called for in Greg’s opinion, but it had ended with him getting on a copter in Berwick-upon-Tweed and winding up here.Twiddling his thumbs.

“Detective Inspector?”

He looked up.A roundish man, halfway to bald, had just opened the door. “That would be me.”

“Dr. Landry,” he said.“Sorry to keep you waiting.But you must understand that, with inmates like these, one really can’t keep to a schedule.Please, follow me.”

As they passed through a series of heavy doors into the restricted portion of the prison, Greg’s impression changed abruptly.Glass and steel and concrete, not the least bit worn or grimy.Like a modern office building, except everything looked much weightier, and there was no natural light anywhere.The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees.What kind of prisoners merited this kind of treatment?The cost alone must have been staggering.

“I understand you’ve agreed to interview him in his cell?” Landry said as they went.

“Yes.”

“He may or may not even acknowledge your existence, you know.Holmes is the strangest prisoner we have, and that’s including the cannibal.He’s gone months before without speaking to anyone.Totally unresponsive to stimuli—like catatonia, except he’ll eat a little.We haven’t been able to determine what triggers it.”

“Well, I hope he’s talking now!” Greg said.“It was a long trip.”

“At the moment, yes.What do you want to talk to him about?The liaison only said ‘background.’You can’t think he’s had any involvement in criminal activity in the outside world since he came here.”

“He’s not a suspect in my investigation.Why, do you think he should be?”

Landry smiled.“Well, we’d certainly hope not.That wouldn’t reflect too well on us.But you’re the first detective ever to pay him a visit.Naturally, I wondered.”

They entered an elevator, which began its descent so smoothly Greg almost didn’t notice it.“Does the family ever visit?”

“No.His parents never sought permission, and they’ve been dead for some time now.”

“What about the brother and sister?”

“Well…”The elevator door slid open as Landry gave him a look of distaste.“Given the nature of his first offense, it’s hardly surprising that they wouldn’t choose to come.”

“Yeah.”He’d dug up the microfilm when he’d gotten back.THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD HELD IN SLAYING OF LITTLE BROTHER’S FRIEND.And darker hints in the text.“No contact of any kind with them, then?”

“I think the sister, Euros, sent him a letter after their parents died.That’s it.”

“Well, that’s bleak.” 

“It doesn’t seem to trouble him much.He’s never mentioned them.”They had reached the end of a corridor.Landry paused.“Now, you should understand that the standard furnishings in this facility are _extremely_ spartan.However, with prolonged cooperation, the inmates can earn the right to request more comfortable surroundings.Holmes has been here a long time.”

“Yeah?”Greg raised an eyebrow.“He works a program?Studies a trade?Goes to substance abuse treatment, anger management?”

“Something like that.”He punched a code into the door.“I’ll leave you to it.”

“Not coming?”

“I think he’ll be more talkative without me.We don’t have the rapport you might hope for after so long.”

The final door slid open.

“Right, then,” Greg said, and stepped through.

  


Greg wasn’t sure what sort of horror movie visual he’d been expecting to see as he approached Holmes’s cell, but it wasn’t a man sitting in an armchair in a snug, cozily-furnished, richly-carpeted Victorian nook, all reds and creams and golds, reading a book.He didn’t have much physical resemblance to the other two.He was very pale—well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you—and lanky, sharp-featured, with a long nose.The overhead picked up a faint red in his hair.More than a little odd, but not necessarily _intimidating._ Though the worst person Greg’d ever met was a tiny old lady pensioner who’d poisoned half the neighborhood’s kids.The book was thick, with onionskin pages; Holmes turned the page approximately once a minute as Greg waited, apparently oblivious to Greg’s presence.

But of course he couldn’t actually be, and Greg was willing to be patient, but he didn’t have all day to stand around this place.“Mr. Holmes?” he said.No response.“Or…whatever it is you’d like to be called?”

He turned the page.“Most of the guards here call me Mike.”

“Mycroft, then,” Greg said, and that won him the ghost of a smile.“If you’re amenable, I’d like to talk to you about some murders.”

The smile diluted itself to nothing.“Whatever stories they’ve told you about me, Detective Inspector, you can’t believe I just popped out of here for a quick spot of slaughter and then popped back in.”

“Oh, you’re not a suspect.I just wanted to ask you some questions.”

Another page turn.“Detective Inspector, in the twenty years I have been imprisoned, I have been asked by my captors to predict terrorist attacks; to make fortunes in the markets for them; to break reputedly unbreakable codes.I have cooperated, not because I have been rehabilitated in any way, shape, or form, but simply to stave off boredom.Why do you imagine I’d be interested in something so limited as murder?”

Damn.Greg had actually been able to _hear_ the semi-colons as he spoke.Impressive, if totally unbelievable.“Well, it involves your family,” he said.

Mycroft’s finger halted, mid-flick.He still didn’t look up.“My parents and my uncle are dead.”

“Yeah, I know.The other two.”

Flick completed.

“Some hikers got lost and found a body on the grounds of Musgrave last week.Partially decomposed, but forensics suggest that he was tortured and killed in much the same way as two people in London.My cases.We think it’s a serial killer and we’re trying to figure out the connection, if any”—he remembered to add—“to the estate.”

Mycroft snapped the book shut and finally looked at him.His eyes were remote. “Tell my sister that I appreciate her sending me such a _pretty_ policeman, but I must decline to play.”

Greg blinked.Well, this really was the full weirdness.“Your sister didn’t send me, Mycroft. In fact…”He decided to take a chance. “I think she might be involved.”

“You interviewed her.”It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then she sent you, Detective Inspector. I’ve no idea why she’s decided I’m a threat to her at this late date, but she’s wrong.”He flung his long fingers outward.“She won a long time ago.Tell her that.”

Greg stared.Definitely not all there.But he hated to have come all this way for nothing.He tried the first idea that came to mind.

“And what should I tell your brother?”

To his surprise, Mycroft didn’t answer right away.Instead, he stiffened and looked straight ahead for quite some time, not blinking.Then he sighed.“There’s no point in telling him anything.”

His voice was subdued.The book, now held only loosely, threatened to slide off his lap, but Mycroft didn’t seem to notice.Well, that was something.He still cared about _that_.Thinking of what he was exploiting, Greg felt a little of the Musgrave queasiness.But he went on.

“You’re worried about him, huh?”

“No.’Worry’ implies fears about events that may come to pass.”Mycroft’s voice gathered coldness as it went along, and his fingers sought a new grip along the book’s spine.“I’d like you to go now, Detective Inspector.”

“Don’t worry, I’m going.But Sherlock’s certainly not the one in charge at Musgrave, Mycroft.Isn’t there anything it would be good for me to know?”

Setting the book aside, Mycroft stood up abruptly.He walked over to the glass and looked directly into Greg’s eyes.In that moment, the family resemblance came out full force.The sudden haughtiness was like a blow.“Yes.Give up, Detective Inspector.Let Archibald Hughes, Caroline Devere, and Phil Dorchester rest in peace.You will never solve their murders.And you may well make matters worse.Good day.”

Now Greg gaped.“I never told you—“

“ _Good day, Detective Inspector_.”

Mycroft turned away from the glass, strode across the little cell, and stretched himself out on the bed.He folded his hands across his chest and shut his eyes.All the life in him went out instantly.Greg might’ve been looking at a fresh corpse.

Even in the midst of his astonishment, Greg knew that he needed to hold onto what little connection they’d just made, and pushing too hard would be the best way to ruin it.But it was still mostly on instinct that he made his way to the door.

  


“You said he didn’t have any contact with his family!”

“He doesn’t,” Landry said dismissively.“He’s a category A, high-escape-risk prisoner.He would have no opportunity to communicate with them that we’re not aware of.”

They were standing in Landry’s office.It looked out over the ocean, but Greg was finding it easy to ignore the spectacular view.“Then how could he possibly know which deaths I’m investigating?Does he get any information from the outside world?”

“Sometimes he enjoys a little BBC Radio 3…”

“No one’s written any operasabout these murders.”

“And we let him have the papers.He reads them all cover to cover, and he has a nearly perfect memory.Your murders must have been reported in them.”

Greg shook his head.“One of them was, maybe both, but there were nearly two hundred murders in London alone each of the past two years.And my name wouldn’t have been in the articles.”

“No.But surely—“

“Contact.Does he have any other contactwith the outside world?”

Landry half-smiled.“Well…this is not a matter of general knowledge, but I suppose you have a need to know.At times, MI-5, MI-6, and other agencies have requested access to consult with him.We even had the CIA in here once.”

Greg remembered the bizarre thing Mycroft had said about terrorist attacks.Could it actually be true?“Consult with _him_?About _what_?”

“I don’t know. We don’t monitor conversations affecting national security.”

“What kind of conversation could someone who’s been locked up since he was a kid possibly have affecting national security?”

Landry drew himself up pompously.“Ours is not to question, Detective Inspector.We only provide the rewards for his cooperation when they inform us it’s appropriate.”

“All right, when was the last time any of them were here?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“That’s not it, then.”A chill skated over Greg’s skin.What in God’s name was he dealing with?“I think you have a real security breach here, Landry.You need to have it looked into right away.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“Look, there’s no way he could’ve known what I was investigating without contact, recent contact, with his family.If you don’t report this, I will.”

Landry’s glower suddenly collapsed, and he sat down heavily on his desk.“You don’t understand.”

“That’s right, I don’t.I don’t understand how a prisoner like him could—“

“‘A prisoner like him.’”Landry laughed mirthlessly.“There is no prisoner like Mycroft Holmes, Detective Inspector.He knows things.Things he has no rightful way of knowing, but that he’ll tell you are ‘obvious.’Calls it ‘deductions.’”He raised a hand.“I know what you’re thinking.But I’m familiar with all the techniques ordinarily used to manipulate a subject into believing that his interlocutor has access to information he doesn’t.That’s not what Holmes does.”He swallowed.“He knew my wife was cheating on me, and with whom, and he’d never even met either of them.And that’s the least of what he’s been able to guess.The man is uncanny.Five hundred years ago, they’d have burned him as a sorcerer.”

“If he’s that clever, maybe I should consult with him myself,” Greg said dryly. 

“You think that’s funny, do you?”

“I think this whole thing is funny.”

Landry looked at his watch.“I have an appointment, Detective Inspector.You’ll be more comfortable in the waiting room.”

Greg didn’t argue.It was going to be a long wait for the chopper ride back.But, after half an hour upstairs in one of the uncomfortable chairs, Landry appeared and thrust a stack of reports at him.“Before you have my facility turned on its ear, Detective Inspector, you could try informing yourself about a few basic facts.”

  


A month later, and Greg was back in that same waiting room, bouncing his foot, halfway between nervousness and irritation.He was no further along with connecting the younger Holmeses to any of the killings.Pennington was ready to mark down the Musgrave killing as a conventional drugs-related murder.SCAS had nothing worthwhile to contribute.He almost wished he’d never gotten their initial alert.

But he had, after all, and that was why he was there.That and the reports Landry had given him.Highlights from the past decade of observations of Mycroft Holmes.He’d read them with increasing disbelief.Landry actually hadn’t been exaggerating.Mycroft was a genius at maths, or at least they thought he was, since he’d refused to take any tests since being committed.But what was really startling about him had nothing do with maths.He had worked out somehow that a psychiatrist’s kid was on heroin (the doctor himself hadn’t had a clue), that an inmate in a completely different wing who he’d never laid eyes on was pretty far along in a plot to murder another one, that there was going to be a departmental reorganization giving powers to a new threat assessment team.He’d predicted the outcome of parliamentary elections.He inferred Sherrinford’s new funding levels each year.And that wasn’t even counting the supposed intelligence consultations, though there were only general references to those in the report.Terrorism, market manipulation, unbreakable codes.Sounded like a fantasy—if only Landry hadn’t confirmed it. 

Greg had reluctantly come to the conclusion that Landry might’ve been right, that Mycroft could’ve just _known_ without talking to Euros or Sherlock.And that had started him thinking.If Mycroft was good enough for MI-6…

It was an outlandish idea.Greg was the first person to admit it.But he was dealing with an outlandish set of murders, and he was running out of options.It had taken a lot of phone calls, a lot of string-pulling, a lot of promises to DCI Miller, who’d fielded multiple protests from the intelligence services (not really something, Greg thought, you’d expect for an ordinary prisoner).If Caroline Devere hadn’t been a peer’s niece, it would never have been approved.But the peer was beyond impatient at this point, and open to trying anything, and so there he was.

Landry was simmering with anger.“I can’t believe you ever got permission for this scheme.It’s mad.”

Possibly it was.But Greg refused to let himself be toyed with by the other Holmes siblings.They were killers or they were world-class gits, and, either way, he needed to know.

“Doesn’t seem like I’m the only one who’s had the idea.”

“Yes, but under your conditions—you’ve read your own files on him now, haven’t you?I can’t believe that it’s necessary to tell a police officer how dangerous he is.”

The police files had been pretty grim reading, but that was decades in the past, and Mycroft was anything but physically intimidating.“If he kills me, you’re welcome to come tell me ‘I told you so.’”

Landry shook his head and waved him ahead of him into the hallway.This time, he followed him into Mycroft’s corridor.“Well, have your little chat.”

Mycroft didn’t seem to have moved an inch since Greg had left him, and he looked exactly as lifeless. 

Damn, Greg thought.“So he’s _not_ talking this time.”

“Not since you last interviewed him, Detective Inspector.”

“You might’ve said.”

“Why, when my expertise is so inferior to yours?”

Greg grimaced.This was not how he’d hoped this would go.

“Hello, Mycroft,” he said. 

If Mycroft was aware of their voices, he didn’t show it.Greg studied him.He looked uncommonly self-assured, even elegant, for a man lying on his back in institutional white pajamas.He’d almost say “smug,” if there were any expression on Mycroft’s face at all.But, no, there was no question about it: he was gone somewhere.There was a disdain to it that was almost impressive.

Greg hadn’t planned on this, and, despite all the reading he’d done, he didn’t kid himself that either he orLandry knew what was going on in that head.He decided that trying to be trickier than Mycroft wouldn’t help.Mycroft had clearly had a lifetime of people trying hard to be trickier than him, without much success.Much better just to be straightforward, if only for the novelty of it. 

“I’ve got a proposal for you, Mycroft.I want you to help me solve the murders we talked about.”

No response. 

“Now, I know—“ He held up a hand.“I know, you’re not interested in something ‘as limited as murder.’Ordinarily.But, come on, it’s a serial killer.Not some drive-by. _Much_ more exciting.”

Landry made a disgusted noise.Greg narrowed his eyes at him.

“And if you agree to consult on this, whatever you ordinarily get from the intelligence people, we can compensate you just as well.More books, better carpets, more, uh, bric-a-brac—whatever it is you like looking at.”

He waited, hoping that would be enough to draw him.It would make things a lot easier.But Mycroft didn’t stir. 

Finally, he took the plunge.“And…given how remote this place is, you’ll be released into my custody for the length of the investigation.Think about it.Fresh air, grass.Ice cream, telly, football, all those things you haven’t had in years.Couldn’t you use a break from this place?” 

Nothing.Through the glass, Mycroft’s breathing looked even and regular. 

“Looks like you’ve had a wasted journey,” Landry said, not trying to hide the smug.“The guard can see you out.”

After he’d left, Greg stood watching Mycroft.Hard to believe he wasn’t interested in getting out.Greg had never met a prisoner who wasn’t.But the man had had two decades to practice being indifferent to what he’d lost.“Not interested, eh?” he said.“Not even…”

 _Not even for the chance to see Sherlock again_ , he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.

“All right, then.Sorry to have disturbed you.” 

What a lot of time and pull wasted.

He was at the door when he heard the voice, croaky with disuse.“I’m not interested in a telly.”

Greg paused and said softly, “What _do_ you want, then?”

  


Mycroft took two steps out the exit onto the helipad, did an odd little stagger, and fell.He pushed himself up to his knees, but kept his hands on the pavement.Greg reached for his arm, but he jerked it violently out of Greg’s grasp.His eyes were screwed shut.

“Are you okay?”

“The ground,” Mycroft said through his teeth.“The perspective.I haven’t been under the open sky in seventeen years.”

“Oh.Damn.”He hadn’t planned for this.It hadn’t even occurred to him, though now it seemed bloody obvious.“Can you stand?”

“Not with my eyes open,” and Mycroft was shivering.

“All right.All right.Just…hold on, mate.Hold on.”Greg cast around.It was too cold for him to take off his coat.He turned back into the building.In the reception area there were a few umbrellas by the door.Greg swiped one without a pang of conscience and came back out.He knelt down next to Mycroft and opened it over him, blocking out the sky.“Is that any better?”

His eyes blinked slowly open.A curl of hair had flopped forward, nearly into them.“Yes,” he said cautiously.

“All right, then.”Greg gave him his other hand to help him up, careful to keep the umbrella close over his head.“It’s only a short walk.”

“I know that.”

The irritation in Mycroft’s voice was reassuring, but as they settled into their seats in the copter, Greg noticed that he was looking green again.“You’re probably going to want to close your eyes for this,” he said through the radio.

The copter lifted off.Mycroft darted one peek down at the swiftly churning Atlantic as they cut an arc over it and immediately sank back in the seat.

“They gave you some Xanax,” Greg said.“I think you’d better take some.If you throw up in here, it’ll be a long trip.”

An hour later, Greg helped Mycroft down from the copter.Three doses of Xanax and he was still absolutely rigid—Greg hated to think what it would’ve been like without the medication.Fortunately, it was another short trip to the car.Mycroft stumbled in, and Greg shut the door behind him with a feeling of relief.

It was a long drive down into London.Mycroft spent most of it looking out the window.Greg could see the pulse still jumping in his neck and decided not to try talking to him.As self-contained as he had been in his cell, he had to be embarrassed now, even if he didn’t show it. Greg also decided not to put on the radio.He didn’t want to listen to Radio 3, and God knew how Mycroft would react to anything else.So most of the trip was quiet and uneventful, so much so that as Greg hit London-bound traffic on the M11, he shifted his focus to the road rather than his passenger.

Sometime after they’d reached the city proper, he glanced over and realized that that had been a mistake.Mycroft was slumped over, basically dangling in the seatbelt, eyes completely glazed over, lips slack.

“Mycroft?Are you okay?Mycroft!”

What had gone wrong?This looked totally different to the way he had withdrawn in the cell.But if the pills had just kicked in late, he’d be asleep, not in a trance.Greg debated whether he should pull over.Probably better to get him to the flat.

“Mycroft!”

He reached out and shook his shoulder.Mycroft flinched and curled away, but the action seemed mechanical, like a plant on a nature show recoiling from an unpleasant stimulus.There was no more awareness in his eyes.

“Jesus, Mycroft, don’t do this now.We’re almost there, okay?I don’t want to have to take you to hospital, I could never explain you.Okay?”

Much against his better judgment, he tried squeezing his hand.He felt the faintest contraction of muscle in reply, and squeezed again.Mycroft made a curious interrupted gasping noise, as if he’d just emerged from deep water, and turned his head, blinking.

Greg hastily released his hand.“Hey, can you hear me?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.He seemed to be looking at the console.After a minute, his hand darted forward and seized the multitool Greg kept there.With one motion, he flicked up one of the knives and then slashed it across his palm.Bright red welled up immediately.

“What are you _doing_?”Greg grabbed at the tool.Much to his relief, Mycroft let it go immediately, fixating on the injury.His breathing was still irregular.Greg wrenched the wheel, pulling them off, then threw the tool into the back seat and seized his wrist.“Are you out of your mind?”

Mycroft said raspily, “I _was_.Or too far in it.”

He flexed his hand, and Greg could see the pain ripple over him.“What are you talking about?”

“Fugue state, Detective Inspector,” and some of the irritation was returning to his voice.“ _Do you have any idea what’s going on outside these windows?”_

Irritation on the verge of giving way to hysteria.Greg looked around.“Yeah.It’s London.Big city.You remember.”

“The last time I was here was in 1983!Do you have any idea how much data—“

Mycroft cut himself off and sat back, shrinking into himself, trembling.

“Ohhh.”Greg didn’t think he had the best imagination, but he wasn’t slow.Yeah, London was different than it had been back then.Even more noise, color, lights, frenetic activity, and Mycroft might as well have been in a monastery up at Sherrinford.“Ohh, okay.I get it.”

“It’s a good thing cars don’t have cigarette lighters anymore,” he muttered, with a choked laugh that was too much like a shriek.

Greg winced and let go of his wrist.Okay.De-escalate.He knew how to do this.“So.Just listen to my voice for now, all right?There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment,” he said gently.“I’m going to lean over and get it, okay?Can you just try to take some deep breaths while I do?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.

Greg opened it as slowly as he could and removed the kit.“In for seven counts, out for eleven, Mycroft,” he said.“It’ll get easier.”

Still no answer, though he thought Mycroft was trying to comply.

He reached over for the injured hand.As his fingers approached, Mycroft’s hand executed a sort of jerky swoop in the air, but then halted.“Okay.Okay,” Greg said, and moved again.

When Mycroft surrendered his hand to him, it felt like rescuing a wounded bird.

  


“All right,” Greg said, pushing the door of the hired flat open with his shoulder.“I got some—“

The small, institutionally-furnished lounge was empty.Greg dropped the takeaway bags on the table and glanced around.The box of case files was missing, too.For a minute, he felt a lurch of disappointment, then shook it off.Mycroft couldn’t have done a runner, they’d had eyes on the flat while Greg was out…

“Mycroft?”

The bedroom was empty.The bathroom door was closed.

“Mycroft?Fair warning, I’m coming in there in thirty seconds.”

No answer.Greg cracked the door and peered in, hoping not to see anything he wouldn’t be able to unsee. 

Mycroft was sitting on the floor with the files scattered around him, reading one.He didn’t seem to have noticed Greg.Greg relaxed and pushed the door all the way open.“Mycroft.What’re you doing in here?There’s a table in the lounge.”

Mycroft blinked a couple of times and then looked up slowly.“Natural light,” he said.“I couldn’t concentrate.This is the only room in the flat without a window.”

Oh.“Well, it’s gone dark out now.I’ve got our dinner.”

“I told you before you left that I wasn’t hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten all day.You’ve got to eat something.”

“Not yet,” he said, but unfolded himself and rose.

At the table, Greg pushed a foil container towards Mycroft.“Spaghetti pesto.It’s got garlic and—“

Mycroft took one sniff and pushed it away.“Out of the question.”

Now that Greg thought about it, Mycroft probably _had_ been eating the blandest food imaginable for the past twenty years.When he went in, curry was still mildly daring.Pesto might have been a bridge too far.Although Greg would’ve been gagging for something new after all that time. “All right, we’ll get you something else.”

“I think the porridge already in the kitchen will be sufficient,” Mycroft said, rising.“Tomorrow.”

“Come on, Mycroft,” Greg said, “we’re in the middle of London, you can have almost anything.Maybe not the best version of it, but—“

“Porridge and some more files,” Mycroft cut him off, and recited a list of names.

“Who are _they_?”

“More victims.Potentially.”

Greg’s eyes widened.“How do you know?”

“I don’t know,” Mycroft said.“I’ve _deduced_.They’re other cases that caught my attention when I was at Sherrinford.”

“Like mine?”

He’d been wanting to get Mycroft to explain that.

“Like yours.I suspected those at once, though I wasn’t confident until you came to see me.I’ve been watching Euros toy with the world for many years now.”

“Did you read about her paper on, what’s it called, Linear A?”

“I _read_ her paper on Linear A.It was so depressing I didn’t eat for three days.But she’s done other things without signing her name to them.Stock market crashes.Certain diplomatic incidents, computer viruses.She enjoys making a mockery of human endeavor.” 

“We’ll just have to give her something she can’t laugh at,” Greg said.“Do you need anything else?”

Mycroft was at the door of the bedroom.“Blackout curtains for the windows.The bathroom is not exactly the most comfortable venue for research.”

His mind was racing.He wondered if he could get the files that evening.“Sure.”

  


The next morning, Greg asked the officer outside the door, “Any problems, Constable Donovan?”

The young woman shrugged.“No.Though the telly’s been on most of the night.”

“All right.Thanks, I’ve got him now.”

Inside, Mycroft was eating his porridge, still in the clothes from the day before.Greg couldn’t tell whether he’d slept or not.“Do you have the files?” he said, without looking up from the paper.

Greg shook his head.“It’s going to take a little while longer.Thought we’d run some errands.”

“Such as?”

“Clothes and things.”They’d given him jeans and a jumper at the prison, so absurdly-sized that Greg’d wondered if they’d been chosen out of spite.He was swimming in them.Without the files, it wasn’t as if Greg had anything better to do.

Mycroft frowned, still absorbed in the classifieds, of all things.“What does it matter what I wear?”

“Come on,” Greg said, starting to wonder whether he’d accidentally taken on a side line in social work when he’d sprung him, “those can’t be comfortable.”

Mycroft hesitated.“All right.”

They didn’t really have a budget, so an Oxfam shop it was.Luckily, there was one close by.Mycroft stood with his back against the wall, looking uncomfortable, while Greg tried to find an outfit which would let him pass as a detective amidst all the bad fashion choices of the past five years that had washed up in the shop.It wasn’t easy, given Mycroft’s height and build, but eventually he found a couple of button-downs, trousers, and shoes that looked as though they might work.As they made their way towards the changing rooms, Mycroft stopped, looking at a rack.Greg turned his head to follow his gaze.He was staring at a charcoal grey tweed blazer with a wistful light in his eyes.He reached out and lifted the sleeve, feeling the material between finger and thumb.Bloody pompous, but…

“Right,” Greg said, and took it.

The sight of Mycroft when he emerged from the little curtained cubicle was startling.Up til that moment, Greg had only seen him in clothes from Sherrinford, kit that was designed to make sure you didn’t forget what he was.Now…he could be any bloke.A slightly poncey bloke in the blazer, mind you, but someone you could pass on the street without even really noticing.

Looking at him now, thinking of the strange creature that had stared at him out of the cell, Greg felt a sudden scurry of concern that that might not have been the best idea.

He shook it off.

“Well,” he said, “that’s sorted, anyway.”

Mycroft, though, was gazing into one of the mirrors on the walls, his hands skimming over the cloth, alighting on it here and there, adjusting it.Greg couldn’t read his expression.“I don’t look at all like myself,” he murmured.

“Believe me, mate, it’s a big improvement,” Greg said.

Mycroft continued to tug at the cloth.

“Why do you care?” he asked finally.

“What?”

Mycroft turned away from the mirror.“What I wear.What I eat.Why does it matter to you?”

He wasn’t picking a fight, it was a genuine question.“Well, after all, you’re a human being.”

Mycroft snorted.“That’s very much a minority position.”

“That doesn’t really bother me.”

He looked at him more closely.“It genuinely doesn’t.”

“Just because I’m a cop doesn’t mean I’ve got no idea of human decency, Mycroft.”

“Human decency,” Mycroft mused.“An elusive concept at the best of times.”

“It’s easier if you don’t overthink it,” Greg said.“Come on, let’s pay for this stuff and get back to work.”

  


They spent the next three days buried in the flat, curtains drawn, going through files.Mycroft worked steadily and silently, pallid in the gloom, seemingly untroubled by the goriest crime scene photos.His ability to focus was remarkable.Greg wished his subordinates had one-tenth the concentration.He pulled case after case until the size of the chosen pile got a little alarming.Greg read from the stack, trying to grasp the pattern but feeling like he was being left in the dust.On the third day, he finally felt he had to say something.

“All right,” he said, “there’s nothing really distinctive about these victims.Even Caroline Devere was just a shopgirl.”

“That’s on purpose.”

“And a lot of them had burns, but some of them don’t.”

“She’s always liked fire,” Mycroft said absently, turning over pages at a pace that had not really stopped being alarming.“But these are experiments.She’ll have wanted to test different variables.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“Dying.”Mycroft looked up at him.“The mystery even her mind can’t decipher.”

Greg nodded.It made a certain amount of sense.But—“Some of these involved sexual assault.That’s a big variation.”

“Experimenting with other things.You’ll notice there’s no evidence of, ah, male involvement.”

“Christ.” 

“Fortunately, it’s a relatively trivial subject, and she would have exhausted her interest early.”

Greg rubbed his eyes.“Relatively trivial?”

“You disagree?”

“I couldn’t stay married myself.It can’t be that simple.Or else I’m just an idiot.”

“I doubt it was sex that was the real problem,” Mycroft said.“It hardly ever is.”

Greg half-laughed, startled.“How would you know?”

Mycroft made a droll face.“For such an ostensibly private matter, people are dreadful at keeping it to themselves.”

Greg remembered Dr. Landry and his own cheating wife.“All right, tell me.What can you deduce about Jenny and me?”

“I can’t possibly…”

“Come on,” he said, suddenly feeling the urge for an objective point of view.You could hardly get more disinterested than Mycroft, flipping through crime scene photos like a connoisseur.He could use a good explanation.“Give it a go.”

Mycroft turned his hand over.“Well, given the schedule you’ve been keeping and the state of your clothing, you, rather than she, kept the flat in London.You’re the kind of man who would move out yourself so she could stay, therefore she must have walked out on you.You show none of the hallmarks of being abusive.You’ve also given no indication of the substance abuse commonly associated with guilt, don’t dress or wear cologne as for a lover’s rendezvous planned later, and interact with the quite attractive Constable Donovan without a hint of self-consciousness, so I very much doubt you drove her out through infidelity.Rather, I would wager, it was she who was unfaithful.It was a surprise to you, and one of the reasons you’ve thrown yourself into this case is to reestablish your confidence in your own skills as a detective.That confidence was already suffering as a result of your inability to solve the Devere and Hughes cases, which you sensed were connected but couldn’t prove, as is obvious by your willingness to drive three hours up to Musgrave on the off-chance you might learn something.”

Greg stared, feeling like he’d asked Mycroft to pull a thread and he’d ended up unravelling Greg’s whole life.Now he was watching it vanish before his eyes. 

“You let her go,” Mycroft continued, “but you still feel regret and uncertainty.You removed your wedding ring, but your unadorned finger still catches your eye.Every time you answer the phone in this flat, there’s a moment of wistfulness on your face when you realize who it is, or, rather, isn’t.Every time.”

His eyes were oddly earnest, and then Greg couldn’t bear them.He balled up a fist, then used it to rub his temple.“Fifteen years, you know.Fifteen years and I had no idea.I feel like such an idiot.”

Mycroft watched him uncertainly.“I’m sorry,” he said.“I don’t think it’s possible for deductions _not_ to be wounding.At least, not the way I do them.”

Greg shook himself.“No.No, I asked.And we needn’t spend any more time on it,” he said, reaching quickly for another pair of folders.“These two are suicides.”

“Well-spotted.”

He rolled his eyes.“Are you saying they were fake?”

“No more than Uncle Rudy’s was.She killed them, just not by physical force.”

“Uncle—you’re saying she killed the, uh,” he made a vague gesture, “the fruit?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.Greg looked over at him.He had laid down the file in front of him and was squaring the edges of the documents with meticulous care.There was the faintest tremor in his fingers, so that he kept undoing his own work, and had to leave it unfinished.“I suppose that is how you would see him,” he said finally, quietly.

Damn.“Mycroft, sorry, that wasn’t—“

“Rudy was eccentric but extremely clever, like all the Vernets.He worked for MI-6.Did you know that?”

“No.”

“He was the only member of my family who thought I was innocent.I always hoped—“ He stopped again.“Well, that was foolish of me.I learned better.”

Mycroft’s tone was so bleak that Greg thought a minor shift of topic might be for the best.“You think your sister can talk people into killing themselves?”

“Of course she can.”

“I’m lucky she didn’t try it on with me, then.”He forced a chuckle.

“Yes.”Mycroft eyed him narrowly.“You believe me.”

“I do,” he said, and only then did it hit him how odd Mycroft’s claim actually was.“God help me, I do.”

“To what do I owe the honor?”

Greg considered.“I met her.”

He smiled slightly.“Congratulations, Detective Inspector, you may actually have a functioning brain cell or two.”

“Thanks ever so.”Greg closed the folders.“Right, then.Suicides are in.” 

Greg put them back in the pile, but silently resolved that SCAS wouldn’t be hearing about them.He _did_ believe Mycroft—but he knew how it would look from the outside, and the last thing he needed was Miller deciding that his prisoner had gotten into his head somehow.That’d get this phase of the investigation shut down quick.

Later that evening, Greg started up from a doze over the table.Mycroft was still sitting in the same position, his expressionless face lit eerily from below by the task lamp pulled over the documents he was examining.He didn’t seem to notice Greg’s movement.

It seemed a pity that this was how he was spending all his time outside.For all he’d seen or done, he might as well have been back in Sherrinford. _Simply to stave off boredom_.

But Mycroft was in this situation because he’d put himself in this situation, years ago.It was pointless to worry about whether he was enjoying the outside world.

Besides, even though his face didn’t change as he closed one file and reached for the next, Greg wasn’t entirely sure he _wasn’t_ enjoying himself. 

  


The next afternoon, Greg was shuffling through the files, trying to figure out which could be most easily investigated for connections to Musgrave, when the phone, an office model someone had brought in, rang. 

“Lestrade,” he said, cradling the receiver against his shoulder as he flipped.

“Detective Inspector,” a woman’s voice said.“So the story is true.”

Greg straightened up abruptly, nearly dislodging the phone.He grappled with it for a second, feeling like he’d been caught at something.Across the table, he could see Mycroft go still.

“Put my brother on.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t think it much matters what you think.Put my brother on.”

Her disdainful tone actually steadied him.Entitled twats, he knew how to handle.“No.He’s not—“

Mycroft’s hand darted forward and hit the speaker button.Dammit.Up to that second, Greg would’ve sworn he didn’t know what the speaker function _was._ “This is Mycroft Holmes.”

“ _Mycroft_.”Euros’s voice took on a tone Greg had never heard before.Low, intimate, poisonously sweet.He saw Mycroft start to jerk back, then force himself to sit forward again.“After all this time.You’re out.”

“For now,” he murmured.His own tone was dry, fussy, precise, much the way he’d sounded in the cell.

“How is the outside world?Noisy, isn’t it?”

“It has its moments.”

“Truthfully, I’m surprised you’d want to be out.Sherrinford is such a nice _safe_ place.”

Mycroft laced his hands together on top of the table and looked at them, clearly willing them to be still.“You can know very little about it, Euros.You’ve never visited.”

“Oh, brother-mine, as if I’d need to in order to know everything.It’s so peaceful there.You have your books and those little puzzles they bring you.Quite a pleasant life, really.I can’t imagine what possessed you to play this silly game.”

“It’s not a game,” Greg interjected.

Mycroft stayed focused on the phone.Euros continued, “Or perhaps this is what you’ve been waiting for all this time?The one of them finally foolish enough to believe that you’re harmless.As if what’s inside of you could just _go away_.”

“I’m not harmless, Euros,” Mycroft said.“If I were, you wouldn’t be making this call.”

A brief pause, and then a burst of laughter, cheerful and heartless.“Mycroft, you could never be anything but entertainment to me.‘Don’t do this, Euros.’”Her voice had risen to a higher pitch.“’You don’t have to do this.You’re not this bad.You know it’s not true.’ _So_ amusing.Sometimes I still think of it and laugh.”

Greg felt the color leave his face.Mycroft closed his eyes, but his voice was steady.“I trust this time around will be at least as diverting.” 

“For me.Perhaps not for you, brother-mine.”

Mycroft swallowed.“And for Sherlock?”

“You know we have the same tastes in everything, Mycroft.”

“Is he there now?”

“Oh, no.I keep him very busy.No time for idle chatter.”

Even though his eyes were closed, Greg could see Mycroft starting to withdraw.“How about you come in for a chat with us, Euros?” he cut in, before the length of the silence could give anything away.“We have some follow-up questions.”

“I think not, Detective Inspector.For some reason, you’ve decided to give an ear to the man who destroyed our family, who any sane person would know couldn’t be trusted outside of the very secure facility where he’s been kept for years.Any further communication will have to be through our solicitors.”

“That’s a shame,” Greg said.“You could clear up some little points.”

“I’m sure Mycroft can do that for you,” she said.“He is, after all, a _prodigy_ of murder.Goodbye, Detective Inspector.Until later, brother-mine.”

The line went dead.

“Well,” Greg said, forcing a smile.“Someone’s certainly hit a nerve.”

“She sounds exactly the same,” Mycroft said to himself.“Her voice is different, but she’s exactly the same.”

Greg wondered how many times over the years Mycroft had lain in his cell and gone over in his mind what she’d said at the trial about him.He probably remembered it in exact detail.What else was there to think about, when you were locked away at thirteen? 

“Right,” he said.“We could use a bit of a breather, after that.Let’s go.”

Mycroft opened his eyes, looking as if he was surprised the world was still there.“Where?”

Greg fumbled, but only for a second.“How about the cinema?”

  


Greg looked over as the credits ran, the black and white flickering shadows over Mycroft’s face.He was leaning back with his fingers pressed together over his lips, hiding his expression.Then he sat up, hands going to the armrests, and Greg could see him blinking away entrancement, the pleasure slipping from his face as the lights came up.For just a second, he looked like a little kid.Greg had to smile.

“Did you like it?” he said.“It’s got style.But it _is_ a little corny.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, still looking at the screen.“Sydney Greenstreet certainly makes an impression.I’d forgotten what it’s like…so absorbing.”

“I guess they didn’t show you films back there, huh.”

The pleasure was gone from his expression now.“No.There is supposed to be no _mental_ escape possible from Sherrinford, either.”He took a deep breath.“But that was enjoyable.Thank you, Detective Inspector.”

Outside, it was a pleasant late summer day.Greg bought ice cream in a little shop, despite the doubtful face Mycroft made, and they sat on a bench overlooking the Thames to eat it.Mycroft took cautious little licks at his, like a wary cat.Greg decided he didn’t need to supervise his ice cream consumption and instead just let himself enjoy the moment, the sun on the water, the people wandering by.The nagging sense of failure with Jenny that had been running beneath all his thoughts had subsided, at least for the moment. 

“Hmmm,” Mycroft said.

Greg glanced at him.He was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, the neglected ice cream dripping down his hand, watching the people much more closely than Greg himself had been.“What?”

“Nothing.Revising hypotheses.”

“Come again?”

“One can only draw conclusions from the data one has,” Mycroft said absently.“For years, I’ve been limited to books and the personnel at Sherrinford.A limited set.Enough for simple deductions, but there is so much more I need to observe.”

“Like what?”

“You see that man there?” Mycroft indicated with his eyes.“A widower, recently home from working a deep-sea oil rig.He has two children, but he’s not very good with them.”

Greg stared at the man, who was an ordinary-looking bloke walking along at half-speed.Christ, he would’ve been a hell of a cop, if he could unbend a little.“How do you know that?”

“The two bags.But there’s more; I just can’t see it yet.Oh, yes, he’s had a drink.He’s wondering if he should have another before picking the children up from the minder.”

“What are you talking about?”

“ _Data_ ,” Mycroft repeated.“It’s like the world going from two- to three-dimensional.Everything’s connected, opening up, unfolding—oh—“

Mycroft’s eyes were wide, jumping from place to place, and he covered his mouth abruptly, as if he’d just learned something awful or amazing.Greg felt, surprisingly, a little breathless.He hadn’t the faintest what was going on, but he knew it was something remarkable.

“Mycroft?”

After a minute, he said, “I think I need to go back to the flat.Please.”

Greg looked wistfully at his ice cream.“All right.Come on, we’ll get a cab.”

Behind them, the man made an about-face and entered the pub he’d just passed.Greg swore under his breath.

  


On the ride home, Mycroft sat quietly with his hand over his eyes.Once they got back to the flat, he went straight to the bedroom to lie down.Greg decided to head back to the Yard for a little while to deal with some of his other cases before Miller got too impatient with his priorities.Constable Donovan was on post outside, and he said, “Keep an ear out, won’t you?He may need something.In fact, check on him in an hour to make sure he isn’t catatonic.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

Now there was a question that couldn’t be answered in five minutes.“He’s just overstimulated.”He chuckled.“Like a toddler home from the circus.”

She frowned.“I’ve read about him.”

“Not a bad idea,” he said, looking at her a little more closely.She was very young, probably in her probationary period, but she seemed alert and guarded.Her refined features were an odd match for the constable’s uniform. 

“I wanted to know what we were up against.Detective Inspector, by the time he was fifteen, he’d killed three people.Why are we minding him?”

It wasa fair question.“He’s out to help us with the Devere murder—which, it turns out, is a serial killing.Consulting, I guess you could say.”

“That’s not exactly procedure.”

“No, but it’s a special case.He’s related to the chief suspects.He’s got remarkable insight.”

“Like what?”

Well, Greg thought, like being able to tell you the life stories of random strangers on the street.Or even your own.“He’s connected them to more than a dozen other murders.”

“Hm.”She frowned again.

“What?”

“The Devere murder wasn’t reported as a serial killing.Did _he_ tell you it was?”

“Well, SCAS was the first to suggest it, and then he confirmed it.Why?”

“Just…the more crimes he connects to the killer, the better he looks.And, I bet, the longer he stays out, doesn’t he?”

Startled, Greg looked back at the door.“I…yes.That’s true.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to believe him?”

He paused.Euros and Sherlock Holmes had given him plenty of reason to suspect them in the Dorchester case.But the broader connections—those had been Mycroft’s idea, from the beginning.He didn’t know how he could’ve guessed _which_ killings Greg had been interested in, but, then, he’d just seen him read a stranger as if his life story was written on his shirt.He might’ve spotted Greg’s desperation and come up with some way to play him. _He is, after all, a prodigy of murder…_

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.“For now.But I don’t just take what he says on faith.We’ll check everything, Constable.”

She nodded.“I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, Detective Inspector—“

“Not at all,” he said.“But you don’t like him.”

She seemed surprised he’d noticed.“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been taking turns at this post since it started.When I bring files in, he doesn’t even see me.”

Greg cocked his head.“I think he sees everything, Constable.Likely he just doesn’t know what to make of you.”

“I don’t want him to _make_ anything of me,” she said.“I just don’t like feeling like furniture.”

“I’m not sure we’re not all just furniture to him,” he said.“But I can add working on his manners to the list, right after solving the serial killings.”

She grinned wryly.“I can’t argue with your priorities, Detective Inspector.Just—“ She sobered.“Just be careful.”

“I’ll do what I can.But I’d risk a lot to solve this case.A year and a _half_.”

He left her there, head now buzzing gently with new worries.

  


There were plenty of loose ends waiting for him back at the Yard.As badly as Miller and the brass wanted him to solve the Devere murder, that didn’t mean he could just toss every other case aside, the way he’d been doing for the last few days.So, the next morning, he went back there, rather than the flat, to get some more done.It was simultaneously soothing and frustrating to work on other cases—soothing to actually get make progress on something nice and ordinary for once, frustrating knowing that none of it was as important as the case he _hadn’t_ solved. 

So it was late afternoon when he reached Gower Street.Donovan raised her eyebrows as he approached.“At last.I think he’s been pacing all day.”

“ _He’s_ got nothing better to do,” Greg said, and went in.

Mycroft was actually folded up on the sofa, watching telly, flipping through the channels at precise five-second intervals as Greg put down another armful of files.“You should bring me your other cases, too,” he said, sounding irritated.“It’s a waste of time for you to work on them.”

“You think you can just solve them all from the record?”

“If your record is at all adequate, yes.”

Greg frowned.“I didn’t realize my entire job was a waste of time.”

He waved a hand.“I suppose on a day-to-day basis you might as well struggle along like everyone else, but while my sister is still at large it’s an absurdity.”

“You know that solving a case isn’t just about figuring it out in theory, right?You have to be able to prove it.”

“How could I not be aware of that?” Mycroft said crossly.“I’ve identified seventeen of Euros’s victims for you, and yet she remains free.As far as I can tell, the police are most competent at locking up the innocent.”

“What are you talking about?”

Mycroft turned the telly off.“What canI be talking about?You aren’t that slow, Detective Inspector.”

He had to be kidding.“You?Are you serious?”

Mycroft stilled for just a second, his lips parting.Then he turned and stared at him.“You think I killed Victor Trevor.”

Greg just kept a stray cynical snort from escaping.He’d found Mycroft in the deepest darkest dungeon there was, what could he have possibly thought…?But Mycroft sounded astonished.And offended.His eyes were dark.

“Look,” he said placatingly, “you were barely thirteen.I’m sure you didn’t…back then the Crown actually had to overcome a presumption that someone your age couldn’t tell right from wrong enough to commit a crime—“

“Which the Crown _did_ in my case.“

“Well, your sister said—“

“I know what my sister said.All of it.Noneof it was true.I never hurt Victor Trevor.In _any_ way.”

Mycroft was actually flushed.The contempt in his voice kept cracking, falling open, leaving a strange rawness.

But Greg was used to criminals denying their crimes, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.They got angry.They got quiet.They cried.They screamed.They were guilty all the same. 

“Mycroft, come on, I read your file.You killed two other children practically the minute you arrived at Aston Hall!And then when they sent you to Sherrinford, that doctor.”

“They were attempting to take advantage of me,” Mycroft said.“If you’ve seen my file, you must know that when I was younger I looked like someone who could be made a victim.The staff weren’t going to lift a finger to help me.I had to make it very clear from the outset what I would not tolerate.Those deaths saved other lives.”

Greg cocked his head and looked at him.That the residents sometimes got up to bad things at places like Aston Hall—that was no secret.He could see the chubby Mycroft he remembered being a target.Although that hardly justified killing someone…but, then, he had only been a kid…

And he had been convicted of murdering another kid, the six-year-old friend of his little brother.The little sister had not quite said he was fiddling with both of the boys, but that was the conclusion the cops had come to.And the verdict had borne out their position.

“Look, I came and got you out knowing what you’d been convicted of.Nothing’s changed.Does it really matter what I think?”

Mycroft’s eyelids suddenly drooped, as if they’d become too heavy to keep up.He turned away.“Yes.It does.Did.No, it doesn’t.”

Those choppy, inconsistent phrases sounded nothing like Mycroft.Greg felt as if he’d been handed a forfeit in a game he didn’t know he’d been playing.

“I’m quite tired,” Mycroft went on.“I think I’ll take the rest of the day off.”

“Mycroft,” Greg said, “I really didn’t think—“

He rose.“You believe my sister may be a serial killer, and yet it never occurred to you that Victor Trevor might have been her first victim.No, Detective Inspector, you didn’t _think_ at all.Good day.”

  


Greg spent most of the next day at the Yard, calling the officers in charge of the various cases to see if Euros or Sherlock had turned up in their investigations, without any success, as well as faxing them pictures, practically begging them to show them around.Neither of the Holmeses were in the databases, so there were no fingerprints for comparison.But, then, the detectives told him over and over that there wasn’t any meaningful fingerprint evidence.Seventeen unconnected killers all unusually skillful about not leaving evidence behind—what a coincidence.He hung up the phone each time just a bit more wrong-footed.

To be honest, though, he was glad to keep busy.He didn’t want to think about the question Mycroft had raised the day before.It made things too complicated.After all, Mycroft had been convicted by a jury.Until that day, he’d never so much as hinted that he was innocent.Even in his conversation with his sister, he hadn’t said anything that implied that she was actually the one who’d killed the little boy.Not that what he was saying now was impossible, but, with two other killers in the family, why _shouldn’t_ Greg assume that the oldest sibling was the role model for it all?No, Mycroft’s guilt was a perfectly fair assumption to go on.Twenty years on, it wasn’t exactly a question Greg could easily settle.For now, he had to operate on that basis.

But their argument niggled at him, and eventually he admitted to himself why.It had never occurred to him that Mycroft might _think_ that Greg thought he was innocent.He was used to dealing with people on a basis of suspicion.Sure, questioning went easier if people didn’t realize he didn’t trust what they were saying, but, sooner or later, for anyone of reasonable intelligence (and Mycroft’s intelligence was downright _un_ reasonable), it came out.Many of them got angry, but it had never felt personal to him.It was just the way he had to think to do his job.Now it struck him how personal it was to _them_. 

And he didn’t generally take suspects clothes-shopping or to the cinema and for ice cream after.

When you put it like that, it sounded less like consultation and more like…dating.Well.Not quite.But something more than a professional relationship, for sure.

If it had been deception, it had been deception to get the job done.To keep Mycroft functional in a world that was unfamiliar and threatening.To get the best analysis out of him despite Euros’s attempts at sabotage.He was trying to stop a serial killer, and against that, the hurt feelings of a (maybe) prodigy of murder didn’t really count.

Unless they themselves interfered with solving the case.Right, then, he resolved.No more hand-holding.Mycroft didn’t really want it, anyway.

That decided, he hauled himself to his feet.Time to make another report to Miller.

  


When he returned to the flat, the lights were off.Mycroft was sitting in the lounge, fingers templed in front of him, lit only by a strip of late afternoon light falling through a gap in the curtains.He didn’t stir as Greg came in.When he switched on the light, Mycroft lifted his eyes and gave him the same look he’d gotten from the other side of the glass in Sherrinford.

So that was where they were.Fine.

“I’ve been talking to my DCI,” Greg said. 

“Tobias Miller.Yes?”

“It’s not that he doesn’t believe you, but we need to start building actual cases.Your theories by themselves aren’t enough for us to get convictions.”

“My analysis has been satisfactory for a number of other agencies.”

Greg shrugged.“They don’t answer to the British jury, lucky bastards.Now, I’ve been on the phone all day trying to find out if any of the officers investigating any of the cases ever even heard the name Holmes, and, so far, no joy.”

“They didn’t know what they were doing,” Mycroft said flatly.

“Well, I think we may have to give Euros a little credit for being crafty,” Greg said.“We’re not _all_ idiots here on the force.”

Mycroft paused just long enough to make it clear he was willing to entertain the opposite possibility.“What do you propose we do?”

“Take a run at one idiot’s work.Come on.”

  


The building where they’d found Caroline Devere was just as rundown as the night Greg had first come there.Not for much longer, though—it was Zone 1 real estate, after all, and it was slated to be demolished and turned into a block of flats in the new year. 

“This was your case,” Mycroft said, looking up at the address.“The Devere murder.”

“Yes.A year and a half old now, but the third most recent in your group.”

“I’ve never been to a crime scene.”

“Well, maybe you can catch something I missed.”

He hadn’t meant it to be smart, but he saw Mycroft arch a brow. 

Inside, he climbed the rickety stairs with care, Mycroft close behind him with the flashlight.They reached the top floor and Greg pushed open the flat door.

“In here.Course, we cleared out all the evidence ages ago…”

The very last of the daylight just lit the dingy room.Mycroft shone the flashlight around the walls in odd sweeping movements while Greg switched on the lantern he’d brought to brighten things up. 

“She was just over here,” he said, pointing to the floor in front of the window.“On her back, fully dressed, the burns on her arms, throat slit.Anyone could’ve got in.Sometimes there’ve been squatters in this building, though not in a while.We don’t know how long she and her killer were in here before she died.They left nothing behind.”

“She wouldn’t,” Mycroft said absently, kneeling down next to the patch he’d indicated.He skimmed his fingers over the floor, then abruptly drew them back.“But, in a sense, she did.There are still bloodstains here.Why?”

“We’re not a cleaning service, Mycroft, it’s for the owners to clear up the mess once we’re done.I guess they didn’t bother.”

“Charming.In prison, it may interest you to know, they mop up.”Mycroft looked up at the window.“Ah, of course.”

“What?”

“Eastern exposure.As always.”

“What are you talking about?”

He got to his feet.“Every single one of the murders, Detective Inspector.The victim was left looking east, with an exposure in that direction.”

“You sure?Why?”

Mycroft blinked at him in exasperation.“Euros?The East Wind?”

Greg frowned.“Oh, is that what it means?”Ignoring the slight roll of Mycroft’s eyes, he went on, “Well, I suppose that’s helpful, though it’s not exactly conclusive.Some of them were outside, after all…”

Mycroft had already stopped listening to him.He was frowning down at the floor again.“These bloodstains.I assume they were tested when fresh?”

“Of course.When I said I was an idiot, I didn’t mean a _complete_ one.Victim’s blood only.But someone as clever as Euros wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

“Not now,” Mycroft said.“But…the first known killing.1991.The use of DNA evidence in criminal investigations had barely begun, then.”

Greg’s eyes widened.“You think she might not have been so careful, early on.”

“It’s certainly possible. She must have known about it, but that doesn’t mean she would have believed the police would ever make good use of it.”

“They may not have kept the evidence,” Greg said.“But it’s worth looking into.Although…”He considered.“What would we match it to?We don’t even have their fingerprints.”

Mycroft smiled grimly.“You have me.”

  


They stopped at the Yard on the way back, to take the swab.Mycroft sat patiently on a chair in his office as the nurse poked around in his mouth.It _was_ a good idea.The problem was, it still left them waiting.The officer who’d investigated the 1991 killing (in Dorset) had retired, of course, and the evidence put into cold storage.The department was trying to locate it—not that they were entirely sure what _it_ was—but a decade-plus cold case wasn’t their highest priority, and it would take at least a few days.And there was no guarantee that there’d even be any DNA to find.Greg didn’t relish the idea of sitting around while Mycroft brooded and Euros picked out her next victim at her leisure.And that led him to make another proposal to Miller. Not more daft than his initial one, really, but Miller imposed some more conditions this time.

The trip north was faster with company.Mycroft sat in the back seat of Greg’s car in lofty state, apparently ignoring both him and Constable Donovan—Sally—as they talked about rugby.Greg had thought that he might take a queer turn when he’d told him he thought they should re-investigate the most recent murder, which, after all, had taken place at the only home he’d ever had.But he’d only blinked and said, “If you think it best.”He seemed committed to an attitude of general disinterest as London gave way to the countryside.Eventually, though, the conversation worked its way back round to the investigation.

“What I don’t understand,” Sally said, “is how the killer chose this victim.”

“Haven’t you read the files, Constable?” Mycroft said.

“Oh, so you’re awake,” Greg said, glancing back.Mycroft still had his eyes closed. 

“As many as I could,” Sally said, sharply.“I’ve had other things to do this week than lie in bed reading.Beyond their all being white adults, I didn’t see any connection.”

“Well, it’s not always like the cinema, Sally.They don’t all pick red-headed men with limps who remind them of a nasty fourth-form teacher.These look like targets of opportunity.”

“Not just targets of opportunity,” Mycroft said.“Test subjects.She’s chosen unremarkable people who would offer the fewest confounding variables.”

“Then why this Dorchester?” she asked.“He’s the only victim within twenty-five miles of Musgrave.If it’s not that he fits some pattern…after all these years, why kill someone local?”

“Arrogance?” Greg guessed.Remembering Euros, it seemed reasonable enough.

“You said she seemed smart—“

“You can have no conception how brilliant she is,” Mycroft interjected, tonelessly. 

“Geniuses can be idiots,” Sally said.“But, still, for a genius who was smart enough to do her killings well away from home and leave no evidence behind, that would be pretty stupid behavior.”

“Well, then, Sally, what’s your guess?”

“He did something to provoke her,” she said.“If it really is _her_ , and not _him_.”

That got Mycroft’s eyes open.“It’s _her_.”

“Either way,” she said.“They don’t sound like the forgiving type.”

“ _She_ isn’t,” Mycroft said.

“So you think there’s some more normal sort of motive for this one,” Greg said hastily.

“As normal as possible for that lot,” she said.

Greg considered it.From the minute he’d gotten involved in the Musgrave murder, the atmosphere had been pure melodrama, practically Hammer Horror.The unexpected call from SCAS, the interview with the two Holmeses, the trip to Sherrinford…everything had made him assume that this was a case completely out of the ordinary.Could it actually be simpler than that?God knew Pennington wouldn’t have done a proper job of investigating the possibility.“So you think we should be looking for some kind of connection between Dorchester and one or both of the family.”

“Yes.”

Greg threw another glance back at Mycroft, whose expression was stony.“What do you think, Mycroft?”

“It’s…possible,” he conceded.

“Points to me, then,” Sally said.

“Let’s see how it actually turns out first,” Greg said, and took the turnoff to the town.

  


As they emerged from the faux-genteel high street hotel, Greg glanced over at Mycroft.His face was still frozen in remote disdain.“It’s changed a lot, eh?” he offered.

“Yes.” 

He waited, but Mycroft didn’t appear to have any more to add, so he let it go. 

They didn’t bother to go to the police station.Pennington wasn’t exactly thrilled about Greg’s coming up to reinterview, and it was better not to bait him.So they spent the afternoon and early evening in the delightful task of tracking down a dodgy man’s dodgier associates.Alderlych wasn’t large, but it still managed to have its dreary residential streets where all the women looked beaten-down and none of the men seemed to be working.Many of Dorchester’s pals had left town, and those still around weren’t too keen on talking to the police.Of course, they only wanted to know about a possible connection to Euros or Sherlock, but Dorchester’s mates were either suspicious or aggressively stupid, and didn’t give up much.

Neither Mycroft nor Sally said anything during the interviews.Sally was paying close attention, no doubt taking notes; she was a sharp one, all right, and he was glad he’d suggested her as the backup on the trip.Mycroft’s attention usually seemed to wander early on.Greg wondered if he was absorbing more details, as he had been on the Embankment, or if he had just concluded more quickly than Greg (every single time…) that he wasn’t going to get anything out of the subject.

In the evening, sitting at dinner in an overpriced cafe, Greg said, “D’you think anyone’s recognized you?”

Mycroft frowned.“It’s hard to say.I’ve had the sensation, but then…”

“I’ve seen the pictures,” Sally said, laughing a little.“Trust me, Mr. Holmes, no one would think you were the same person.”

“A statement that could hardly be more ambiguous,” Mycroft said.“But, yes, I think recognition would likely elicit a more concrete reaction from the observer.”

“They’re not fans of yours here?”

The frown deepened to a scowl.“Quite the contrary.”

Greg hastily changed the subject.But, later, as he was getting ready for the first shift of sleep, he said to Mycroft, “You were tried in the Crown Court here, weren’t you?”

Mycroft was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off his slippers.He paused.“Yes.”

“Bit of a circus?”

“More than a bit.The family had never been popular here.Victor Trevor was a local boy.You can imagine.”

Didn’t need the newspaper accounts for that.There would’ve been press restrictions, but the gallery would still have been packed with hostile onlookers.There had probably been threats.“Must’ve been hard on your parents.”

“Oh, yes,” Mycroft said drily.“Mummy found it quite challenging to appear the loving mother while convinced I’d done the whole thing to spite her.”

Greg winced.“She didn’t think that.”

“Yes, she did.”Mycroft’s eyes grew dreamy.“I sometimes wonder if she thought it up to the very end.Or whether she ever began to wonder.To doubt.To fear.When the people around her started dying.When the steering wheel went unresponsive under her hands on the last day.”

“Jesus, Mycroft!”

He shrugged.“ _Que voulez-vous_ , Detective Inspector?”

Something a little less like what a prodigy of murder would say, Greg didn’t answer.“Why did they insist on trying you for murder, anyway?They didn’t have to.Not at your age.Seems like overkill.”

 _Even if you were guilty_ , he didn’t add, but Mycroft seemed to recognize the olive branch for what it was. 

He laid the slippers down, lining them up exactly.“Well, my little sister was very convincing.She wasn’t able to do what she is now, but she was still extremely accomplished.And, while I doubt I was actually flamboyant as a child, there were probably just enough signs of my preferences to convince the extremely conventional local constabulary that I was already a predator well along in the making.But, more than anything, I think…”

Mycroft sat back on the bed, drew his knees up, and rested his chin on them, looking thoughtful. 

“I didn’t seem _right_.My body, my voice, my face…I couldn’t perform whatever feeling it was they were looking for in a proper older brother.If I wasn’t an innocent, then I had to be a monster.”

Greg winced.He remembered the pictures, the ones he’d seen before he’d ever met Mycroft, the ones that he’d accepted without question as the images of a killer barely in his teens.The awkward, chubby, badly-dressed kid.He could only imagine what he’d seemed like in person.He’d like to think that, at the time, he himself would’ve been more critical, more careful—he’d like to think, for example, that he wouldn’t take “seems kind of gay” to mean “predator” in a kid without some better evidence.But he didn’t know.There were a few of his own early cases that he didn’t like to think about too closely.Standards had changed since he’d started out.“I guess the jury agreed.”

“Yes.I kept thinking that, at some point, someone would see the obvious and step in, set matters to rights.I even worked out where the body was and told them.But, rather than make use of the evidence, they just took it as a covert confession.Even Uncle Rudy could do nothing.Everyone was either stupid or useless.Euros won the world, and the world well deserved it.”

Sometimes, just occasionally, though he didn’t let it affect his work, Greg did think that a murder victim had had it coming.But no one deserved Euros Holmes.“Even Sherlock?” he challenged him.

Mycroft’s shoulders rose with his sigh.“No.Though I’ve no doubt she’s compromised him utterly.Not Sherlock.”

The room was quiet for a while.

Greg said, “Look, Mycroft, you must know I can’t just take your word that you’re innocent.That’s just not sensible.”

Mycroft turned to fluff up his pillow.“You’ve taken my word on quite a lot else.”

“All of which needs to be, and hopefully will be, corroborated.I can’t reinvestigate your case now, too.But, look, I promise, if this investigation pans out, I’ll try to get it reopened.Get you out for good.”

Mycroft stretched himself out without saying anything, and Greg wondered if he was angry again, or embarrassed.But he just said, “Detective Inspector, what makes you think that I want to be out for good?”

Greg blinked at him.“Is that a trick question, Mycroft?”

“No,” he said.“It’s the most straightforward question there is.Good night.”

Greg needed to sleep, but he turned on his side and thought about it.Another (maybe) mistaken assumption.He guessed he could understand this one.Mycroft didn’t see any place for himself on the outside.The little niche he’d furnished for himself at Sherrinford might have been confining, but he fit there.Had grown into it.What would he do afterwards, go into a re-entry program?Settle down as a welder in Shoreditch? 

One of the reasons Greg had always liked being a cop was that it gave you a chance to fix things.You couldn’t bring back the dead, of course, but often enough you walked into a situation you could set to rights.Get the bad guys off the streets, get victims some measure of justice.Go to bed with the sense of a job well done.

But, when it came to this case, Greg couldn’t picture any outcome that would count as “fixed.”The dead would still be dead, in their unnecessary dozens.Euros and Sherlock would still be…whatever they had become.And Mycroft…

It was a grim enough prospect that he lay there listening to Mycroft’s breathing for a while until sleep crept over him.

  


The next morning was much the same.They broke for lunch at the disreputable pub that served the depressing street.As they picked unenthusiastically at their food, Greg noticed the waitress, a weary-looking woman a little younger than him, glance in their direction a few too many times.He wondered if trouble was on its way, and kept his eye on the door.

But when he asked Mycroft to pass the salt, she turned back to them and said softly, warily, “Mycroft _Holmes_?”

Mycroft’s shoulders hunched and his fingers curled around the knife.Greg pushed his chair back.Sally looked at him, and he raised a warning hand.

“You don’t remember me.Annie Carruthers.My father owned the garage your parents went to?I own this place now.”

Mycroft blinked and ran his tongue along his top teeth.“A-annie.Yes.”

Greg let himself relax a little.

She dropped her voice further.“You’re out?”

“I’m…” He looked at Greg.“I’m assisting the police with a case.”

“The murder of Phil Dorchester,” Greg put in.“Did you know him?”

“Not really,” she said, clearly sizing him up as a cop at once and not caring for it much.“He was in here once or twice, I suppose.”

“With anyone?”

“I’m sure I didn’t notice.”

“With my sister?” Mycroft asked.

Annie glanced around the room, checking the other occupied tables for work to do, but clearly found none.She turned back to them.“It’s good seeing you, Mycroft.You know, I never really thought it could be you who killed that boy.”

“Why not?” Sally said, when Mycroft didn’t answer at once.

“He was stuck-up, and strange, but more shy than anything, really,” she said.“He was…well, we both had our problems with the weight back then, didn’t we, Mycroft?I remember once coming into the garage when my mum had just taken some sweets away from me.He was there with his father waiting to pick up the car.He could always see things about you you’d rather not tell.He knew right away that I’d been crying, and why.Right before we left, he slipped me a candy bar.”

“A secret softy,” Sally said.Greg kicked her, gently.If he didn’t know better, he’d had sworn that Mycroft was flushing, just a bit. 

“Annie,” he said, “What I can see now is at least six forms of illegal activity going on in this pub…and, by the way, the other waiter is skimming from the till.I’d rather not enlighten my friend the Detective Inspector here, but I have to know whether Dorchester had any dealings with my family.”

“I don’t see why you’re bothering,” she protested.“He’s not missed.Not by anyone here.”

“He may not be the only victim.”

“All right.”She looked away and set her shoulders.“Yes.”

“You saw him with Euros Holmes?” Greg asked.

“Oh, not Euros,” she said.“Do you think she’d ever dirty the soles of her shoes in _this_ sort of establishment?”

Mycroft stared at her.“Sherlock.Dorchester met with Sherlock.”

“Yes.Fairly often.”

Mycroft sat back, and a faraway look grew in his eyes.Annie gently slid Mycroft’s glass towards him, and he took it and drank, automatically.

“Did you ever see them fight?” Greg jumped in.

“No.It was just business.”

“Drugs,” Sally said.

She shrugged.

“When was the last time?”

“About a week before he disappeared.”

“What—“ Greg started.

“Really, that’s enough for you to be getting on with, don’t you think?”

Mycroft stirred and murmured, “Thank you, Annie.”

She moved away from the table.“Get a better class of friend, can’t you?”

“This one hasn’t given me much choice,” Mycroft said.

She snorted.

  


Outside, Greg said, “Well, Sherlock denied even knowing Dorchester.That’s more than enough basis for a re-interview.”

“So it was _him_ , after all,” Sally said.“Not her.” 

Greg wasn’t actually surprised when Mycroft didn’t respond at once.Or when he looked back at him and saw that, in contrast to his own and Sally’s excitement, he’d sunk back into himself again, hands plunged into his pockets, head lowered.

“Not necessarily,” he said.“Sherlock could’ve been buying for both of them.Or Euros could’ve taken offense to something that happened between him and Dorchester.”

Mycroft didn’t seem to hear him.

“Can we question him at the local station?” Sally asked.

“Yes, I’ll ask Pennington to have him picked up.He really won’t be happy about it, though.”Remarkable, how little he cared about Pennington’s opinion.If he’d done the job right in the first place…

“He’ll have to wait til one of them leaves Musgrave,” Mycroft said suddenly, still pale, but looking determined.“She won’t let them be separated without an actual arrest, and you don’t have enough for that, do you?”

“No, not really.”Another thought struck him.“Do you think he’ll demand a solicitor?”

“That’s the other reason to take them separately.Euros wouldn’t think she’d need one, but she might demand one, if she thought it would have the right psychological effect on you.Sherlock…”He pinched the bridge of his none.“I think Sherlock will be too careless.”

He sounded so weary.Greg had always thought there was something a little unusually young and smooth about his looks—as if being shut up in an airless cell had preserved him unnaturally.In that moment, though, he looked older than Greg.

“Do _you_ think he did it?”

“No.”

“Then why so miserable?This is the biggest break we’ve had.”

Mycroft swung away from him, half-clenching his fists.“How do you not see it?If he’s using drugs, that means he’s not _happy_.That means—”

He broke off, shaking his head.

“I think I need to go back to the hotel.”

“All right, we’ll call from…” Greg said, to his suddenly disappearing back.

“Happy?What is he on about?” Sally demanded, as they hurried to keep him in sight.

“He thinks…Euros is a kind of genius at brainwashing.That she can manipulate the people around her to an unbelievable degree.”

“What?Do you?”

“Yes, actually.”Seeing her raise her brows, he hurried on, “I know it sounds daft, but I believe it.”

She didn’t look satisfied, but she took the assumption.“But then…if she controls Sherlock, she’s almost certainly made him her accomplice.Having him living with her and all.”

Greg winced.“I know.”

She cocked her head at the retreating Mycroft, who was moving surprisingly swiftly for someone who’d been out of solitary less than two weeks.“Doesn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Greg said softly.“Yeah, I think he does.”

  


Several hours later, Sherlock strode into the empty interview room as if he owned it and slung himself casually into one of the seats.Greg heard the pained intake of breath next to him.In the faint reflection of the one-way glass, he saw Mycroft fold in on himself, bringing his knuckles to his mouth, eyes locked on his brother as if the entire universe had contracted to him.Seeing the intensity of his gaze, Greg felt the ghost of his earlier worry.If Mycroft really wasn’t innocent, bringing Sherlock within his reach was criminally irresponsible.

But Sherlock was most likely a killer himself.He had to take the risk.

Greg kept his own eyes on the glass as he said, “You’re sure you don’t want to come in with me now?”

“No.”Mycroft had to clear his throat.“No.I need to observe first.”

“Right.If you’re sure.”

That would probably make it easier.Mycroft had no experience in interviewing suspects, of course, and, despite the way he’d gotten something out of Annie Carruthers, Greg doubted he would be a natural at it.He’d likely get in the way in the interview.But Greg still didn’t relish being alone with Sherlock.He wished for a minute that, after several long, fruitless hours waiting for one of the siblings to leave Musgrave, he hadn’t sent Sally off to the hotel to get some sleep, but someone would have to do guard duty that night.He already had a feeling he’d be completely knackered.

Mycroft didn’t answer him.Beyond the glass, Sherlock had put his feet up on another chair and was looking at his nails.Suddenly, he called out, “You’re not going to observe anything through that glass, so stop wasting both of our time and get on with it.”

“Well.”Greg gave him a slight smile.“His Majesty summons.”

As he closed the door to the observation room, he saw Mycroft press the tips of his fingers to the glass.

He breezed into the interview room, tossing a file onto the table.“Afternoon, Sherlock.Thanks for coming in.”

Sherlock gave him a sharp, appraising look up and down that dissolved at the end into contempt.He didn’t take his feet down. “Detective Inspector.As I predicted.”

“Glad to meet your expectations,” Greg said brightly.“You’ve been cautioned?”

“If you mean, did I have to listen to some idiot droning on about my rights in offensively simple terms, yes.”

“Good.Do you know why you’re here?”

“Well, as you’ve spent the past two weeks practically living with my brother, this must be his idea.”He paused for a second, and his eyes flickered side to side.“Is he afraid to come and see me face to face?”

“He may drop in in a bit.”He flipped open the file.“We found the body of Phil Dorchester on your family’s property more than two months ago.”

“Yes.I was there.”

“At the time, you told Sergeant Pennington that you had no connection with him. That you’d never met the man.”

“Correct,” Sherlock said, clicking his tongue on the end of the word.

“Do you still stand by that?”

“Of course.”

Greg realized that he didn’t feel quite as uneasy as he’d expected to.Maybe being around Mycroft for so many days had got him used to the atmosphere the Holmeses swept along with them.“Well, we have a witness who saw you together several times.”

Sherlock didn’t blink.“Your witness—if he or she even exists—is mistaken.Or lying.”

“I don’t think so.Their information was quite detailed.”

“Detective Inspector.”He sat up and leaned forward, his voice dripping with condescension.“With some difficulty, I will proceed on the assumption that you have not simply suborned this witness yourself in a desperate attempt to clear your case.But there is still no escaping the conclusion of your stupidity.Out of some unimaginable folly, you have elected to involve my brother in your investigation.My brother, who has been fixated on me since I was a child.Who actually murdered another child to have me to himself.Compared to that, bribing or threatening a witness is nothing.”

“This witness came forward on their own.”

“So you think.Be that as it may, whoever you may have scraped out of the gutter, do you actually think a jury will believe him over me?”

Sherlock looked so smug that Greg could’ve reached over the table and throttled him.“They might.You may not be entirely aware of how you come off, Sherlock.”

“Oh, I know very well.And I think you do, too.”

“Me?You give me the creeps.”

“You’ll find you’re almost alone in that.If we had wanted to charm you, Detective Inspector”—he lounged back and smiled, giving Greg that dislocated feeling again—“you’d _be_ charmed.”

“‘We,’” Greg said.“Your sister’s not here.”

“No, but my brother is.Is he going to lurk back there all day?” 

“No,” Mycroft said from the door.“You don’t require that much study, Sherlock.”

He looked as calm and detached as when Lestrade had first seen him behind the glass.You’d never think he was seeing his brother in person for the first time in almost two decades, much less that he was hoping to convince him to confess to murder.Greg had come to think of that look as something of a front, or at least an exaggeration, but, seeing him now, he wondered if it wasn’t his more natural state, and what he’d seen in London the exception.

Sherlock didn’t shift position, but swept his gaze over Mycroft from foot to head.“Brother-mine,” he said, his voice low and thick.“How very interesting to see you again.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Mycroft said, advancing into the room.“You look well.”

“And you look—well…”He smiled, nastily.

“I look like someone who’s been in prison a very long time.I’m aware.”

“And with all that time, _this_ is the best you could do?”

He stopped a few feet short of Sherlock. “You haven’t been my only concern over the last two decades.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Sherlock said.“I doubt a day has gone by when you haven’t thought about us.Or a night.After all, there are no little boys in prison.”

Greg grimaced, but Mycroft only said, “It’s true I thought of you often, though not for the reasons you’re so inelegantly suggesting.After our parents died, you were left on your own so young.”

“Not on my own.Euros and I were more than enough for each other.Though I doubt you can understand that.”

“You didn’t go to university.”

“Why should I, when my sister is the greatest mind of the twenty-first century?”

Mycroft nodded.“I hear she composes for you.”

“And I play for her.”

“Indeed.Let me see your left hand.”

“My left hand?” He cocked his head.“Why?Looking for calluses?”

“Show it to him,” Greg said.“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing.” 

Sherlock offered up his hand, elegantly, palm down, as if he expected Mycroft to kiss it.But he only caged it in with his own hands, studying it.The room was silent for a moment. 

Finally, Mycroft murmured, “Oh, Sherlock.Methamphetamine?”

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock said irritably, snatching his hand away.

“You have this season’s haircut.You’re wearing a suit from Turnbull & Asser and George Cleverley shoes, with a rather daring color of Charvet shirt.You’re clean-shaven and your nails are closely-trimmed and polished.And yet there’s that little wound near the cuticle on your left index finger,” Mycroft said.“A remarkable sight on the otherwise meticulously well-groomed hands of a meticulously well-groomed man.Methamphetamine users often pick at their skin.You must have been desperate to keep up with her.I imagine you were willing to try anything.”

“You’re insane.”

“Let _me_ see,” Greg said, reaching across the table.The injury was barely visible, just an interrupted red pucker along the nail.How had Mycroft even noticed it?

Sherlock rested his hand on his thigh, beneath the table.“It’s nothing.I snagged it on something.”

“You were so careful, knowing she must never find out,” Mycroft said, sitting down.“But not quite careful enough.She must have been angry indeed.”

“A fairy story.Pathetic,” Sherlock sneered.“You’d try anything to hurt us, wouldn’t you?”

“I never hurt you.”

“You never—“ He laughed, a little contemptuously, a little wildly.“I suppose you’re monstrous enough to think that, aren’t you?That what you did was harmless?” 

“You were six years old, Sherlock.You don’t remember what happened.”

“ _She_ remembers everything.You can’t deny that.”

“I don’t.But does she ever lie, Sherlock?”Mycroft laced his fingers together on the table and looked down at them.“When Uncle Rudy died, did she cry and cry and tell Mummy and Father how sorry she was?”

Sherlock rose abruptly.Greg started to rise also, but a look at Mycroft stopped him.He took two steps away.“Uncle Rudy hated her,” he said, as if reciting, hands behind his back.“He was trying to get her sent away.Of course she despised him.I did, too, or I did when I understood.”

“And when Mummy and Father died.Did she try to convince you she was grieving?”

“By that time, she was far too advanced to weep over a little redistribution of matter.”

“But she told you she was sorry for _you_.”

Sherlock frowned obstinately.Then he turned back, chin raised.“Anyway, I remember enough.I remember us going up to my room.I remember Victor knocking you down, saying we didn’t want to play with you anymore.I remember that tear in your green plaid shirt.The blood.You were furious.”

Mycroft blinked, rapidly, three times, and didn’t say anything for a minute.Greg wondered if he was going to have to take over the interview, though God knew he had no idea where to take it from there.But then Mycroft spoke.“Victor knocked me down, Sherlock?”

“Yes.Protecting us.He didn’t want to play your little games anymore.”

“Victor was six, too.How much did he weigh?”

“About twenty kilos, I’d imagine.Why?”

“That year I weighed nearly nine stone, Sherlock. _He_ knocked _me_ down?”

Sherlock stood picturing it for a moment, then laughed, nastily.“Yes.Well.You weren’t the most athletic child, were you?It’s not surprising a six-year-old could level you.”

“In my green plaid shirt.”

“Yes.The pattern of the fabric is seared into my memory.”

“This fabric, Sherlock?”

Mycroft reached into his jacket and took out a photo, which he tossed onto the table.Greg stared at it.A Polaroid, lifted from Mycroft’s file.Which had been in his office.Where Mycroft might have been left unattended for thirty whole seconds, and had apparently spent the entire time looting his file.

It was a picture of the Holmes family.Mrs. Holmes looking proud but distracted, Mr. Holmes fussing at his collar, Mycroft in a grey jumper and button-down, half-hiding behind Mr. Holmes, and in front, the two smallest, in identical cheerful smiles.Sherlock in a navy blue jumper.And Euros in a white Aran cardigan over a green plaid dress.

“Green plaid would’ve been rather bright for me that year, don’t you think?”

Sherlock glanced at it impatiently, then his head turned back so he could study it as well.Unwillingly, he settled back into his chair.“This isn’t…”

“It’s simplest to mold a memory around a single vivid detail,” Mycroft said, as patiently as if he were lecturing.“The detail is preserved, but its context is plastic.Victor never knocked _me_ down, Sherlock.”

“It was Euros?” he breathed.

“The story in its broad outlines was true.She only replaced a single character.Victor hurt _her_. _She_ was angry.”

“You couldn’t know that.You’re saying you weren’t even there!”

“I can deduce it, Sherlock.So can you, if you try.”

Sherlock looked at the picture again, running his finger over the green, then pushed it back across the table.

“So you’re saying _she_ killed him.When she was five.”

Mycroft sighed.“Do you doubt she was capable of it?”

Sherlock swallowed.

“Luring him to the well would’ve been a simple trick for her.One hard shove, and her work was done.Except for framing me, of course, but all the world was willing to cooperate with her in that.”

At that, Sherlock rallied. “Yes. _You_ were convicted.Not her.”

“Based on her testimony.Who would believe that such an innocent little girl could be the real sociopath?”

“Well, Uncle Rudy did,” he said.

“Yes.Uncle Rudy did.And Uncle Rudy died.What can we deduce from that?”

Mycroft waited again, the way he must’ve learned to wait in Sherrinford. 

Sherlock hit the table.“I don’t believe it!”

“And when did Mummy and Father begin to suspect?Did Mummy see something she shouldn’t have, out by the gravestones?”

“She didn’t say anything,” Sherlock said automatically.“We weren’t sure—“

“ _You_ weren’t.And then, not too long after, the brakes failed.Did you really think it was just a coincidence?All these deaths, just a coincidence?Is the universe so lazy?”

Sherlock dragged his hand down over his mouth, eyes darting about, visibly picking up dropped thread after dropped thread.“No,” he said at last, wonderingly.“ _She_ did it.All of it.” 

Mycroft sighed again, a deep, ragged sigh, and sat looking across the table as if he was trying to fill his eyes up with Sherlock for good.Greg wanted to…he didn’t even know what he wanted to do.Twenty years of nightmare, and he hadn’t believed him.

But they weren’t done yet.Even if that killing was the worst of all—Jesus, a five-year-old girl murdering a playmate in cold blood—Euros would never get sent up for Victor Trevor.They had to play the story out, and Mycroft was clearly exhausted.“Did Euros get angry at Dorchester?” he put in quietly.

Sherlock looked at him as if he’d forgotten he was there.“Dorchester?”

He let his voice pick up some authority.“Sherlock.Come on.We know he was dealing to you.Annie Carruthers told us all about it.And we know Euros is a killer.We can put two and two together.She found out he was dealing to you, didn’t he?And she didn’t like it.Right?”

Sherlock sagged forward, his head between his hands.“I told her I was only experimenting to see if it would make me cleverer, but she said it meant I thought I was unhappy, and I was terribly mistaken.And I must have been.”

“All right, you two had a heartwarming chat about your quality of life.But then what did she do about Dorchester?” he prodded.

“She had me call him over to make a purchase.Afterwards, she told me to dump the body.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” Mycroft murmured.“And you only took it to the woods.”

“I know, I should’ve taken it off the estate, but I was withdrawing and I was anxious about being away from her and…I didn’t think it would matter.The police are such idiots.”

Only some of us, you posh bastard, Greg thought.“What about the others?”

Sherlock put his head down entirely, hunching his shoulders.“I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

“What about Caroline Devere?”

Sherlock was silent.

“Sherlock?It’s no use, your stopping now.”

“Leave him alone, Detective Inspector,” Mycroft said.

“We can’t just—“

“I’ve got you your confession,” he said, tone absolutely icy.“What more do you need?”

“Information about the other sixteen-odd cases!”

“She’s been manipulating him for the past twenty years.Do you think he can—“

Mycroft was cut off by a sudden rapping on the door.Before either of them could rise to answer it, it flew open.Pennington was in the hallway, with the local DI and a tall, hard-featured man Lestrade didn’t recognize.

“Mr. Holmes’s solicitor is here,” Pennington said, sounding smug.“This interview is over.”

  


“You couldn’t stall him?” Greg growled at Pennington.

“That wouldn’t have been appropriate,” the DI, Horrocks, said.

Meanwhile, the solicitor guided Sherlock down the hallway.He’d half-stumbled to his feet, but he was already regaining something of his confident stride as he went.

“He confessed!We have to hold him!”

The solicitor stopped at that and turned around.“That wouldn’t have been while he was being interrogated by his _childhood_ _abuser_ , was it?A confession obtained by oppression.It will never be admitted.”

Horrocks’s eyes widened, and he said, “For God’s sake, is that Mycroft Holmes?”

That was obviously a lost argument.So Greg didn’t waste any time on it, but instead followed the pair up the hallway, Mycroft close on his heels.

“Sherlock!You can’t go with him.You know what she did.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” Mycroft said, low and urgent.“Victor.Mummy.Father.”

Sherlock put his hand over his eyes.“It doesn’t—“

The solicitor put his hand on his arm and glared at them.“Detective Inspector, you keep this monster away from Mr. Holmes, or there’ll be more than an excluded supposed confession to worry about.”

“He’s going home to much worse,” Greg said.

“Mr. Holmes is going home to his sister, another of your friend’s victims, and if he comes within a mile of Musgrave I’ll have a harassment order issued.”

“And if she kills him?”

“She’d never,” Sherlock said, straightening.

“Of course she wouldn’t.Let’s get out of this appalling atmosphere, Mr. Holmes.”

“If you go back,” Mycroft said, very pale, “she’ll never let you go again, Sherlock.”

“Why would you think I’d ever want to leave her?” Sherlock said.“Goodbye, Mycroft.”

They left.Greg looked back down towards the interview room, saw the expression on Horrocks’s face, and said, “I don’t think this atmosphere is going to be very healthy for us, either, Mycroft.Let’s go.”

  


The moment the hotel room door closed behind them, Mycroft said icily, “I can’t believe you couldn’t hold him.”

Greg grimaced.“You saw how it was.Pennington and Horrocks are clearly under her influence, and—“

He didn’t even seem to hear him.“I did as you asked.I got you a confession. _What else must I do?_ ”

“Mycroft.” He laid a hand on his shoulder.“We did our best.Tomorrow’s another day.“

Mycroft wrenched free.He drew himself up and gave Greg a look of naked contempt, worse than anything he’d directed at him through Sherrinford glass, as if he weren’t even entitled to breathe the same air as him.The family resemblance was so sudden and extreme that Greg took a step back, feeling a wash of nausea.

“You’re as useless as all the rest.All of you, Euros’s toys and puppets.I don’t know why I ever let you take me out of that cell.Now he’s back with her, and—“

He broke off and flung himself down into the armchair, hand over his face, shoulders trembling. 

Greg swallowed, letting his own adrenaline rush recede.Best to leave him be for a bit, and talk to someone who still thought he was human.He went to look up Sally in her room, demanding a drink the minute he walked in the door.

She was none too pleased to hear about recent events.

“He confessed and I missed it?After all that, I missed it?”

“Well, he might as well not have,” he said wryly, rubbing his head.“That bastard’s right, it wouldn’t hold up even if Horrocks and Pennington were on our side.”

“So they did the killings together,” she said.“How does his nibs feel about that?”

“He’s not—he’s not really full of warm feelings for the Met just at the moment.I’m giving him a little room.Ideally, I’d give him a county.”

She cocked her head.“He’s angry at you?”

He tried to be fair.“From his point of view, he’s done everything but caught them in the act for me.But we’re nowhere.He’s reverted to considering me an idiot, and I can’t half blame him.”

“Lucky for me I never got that far.He’ll be quite the pleasure to mind this evening, I imagine.”

“Yes, you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t put a pillow over my face in my sleep.Though that might be preferable to making my report on this to DCI Miller.”

“Look, it’s not all bad.He confessed!It’s got to be easier to make a case when you know what’s happened.”

“That’s Mycroft’s point of view.So far it hasn’t worked out too well.”

She shook her head.“Go get something to eat.I’ll take my post early.”

“All right,” he said.“Mind, if he tries to escape back to prison—“

“I’ll resist the temptation,” she said.“Go on.”

  


Greg came back to his room a couple of hours later.The lights were still on.Mycroft was still in the chair, his hand over his eyes, and didn’t acknowledge his entry.

After a couple of minutes, Greg said, shaking the bag, “I brought you a sarnie.Can’t really get porridge at this time of night.”

“I won’t be eating.”

What a surprise.“Are you going to sit there all night?”

“I’m thinking,” Mycroft said coldly.“I can understand how you might not recognize what that looks like.”

He let it pass.“All right.What about?”

“What’s happening at Musgrave right now.”

Greg sighed and sat on his bed.“Do you think she’s hurting him?”

Mycroft barely moved his head side to side.“Worse.Far worse.”

“What’s worse than that?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.

Greg sighed, tossed the bag on Mycroft’s bed, and started to get ready to go to sleep.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

“God, don’t let it be Miller,” he muttered, and answered it.

It wasn’t.The conversation only took a minute, Pennington was so eager to give him the news.He hung up, feeling sick.

“Mycroft—“ he started reluctantly, turning back to him.

But Mycroft was already sitting up, staring at him.

“Someone’s dead.Some—Annie Carruthers.”

“Yeah,” he said simply.

Mycroft blinked.“Suicide, I suppose?”

“Yes.She…she drank some drain cleanser.”

“You don’t actually believe—“

“No, I’m not _that_ much of an idiot, Mycroft.Sherlock must have told Euros.”

“Yes.”Suddenly, Mycroft was on his feet, pressing his palm to his mouth.“Excuse me.”

Greg stepped back to let him rush into the loo.A few seconds later, he heard the familiar sounds of vomiting, and a flush. 

He hadn’t even managed to get the door shut.Greg looked at it, standing ajar, squared his shoulders, and went in. 

Mycroft was still kneeling in front of the toilet, sweaty and shivering.Greg wetted a flannel in the sink and offered it to him.He took it without looking at him and wiped his face, then his mouth. 

“Water?”

“No…no, thank you.” 

Greg gave him the other flannel, as well, and he rubbed at his face with it.“She was trying to _return a kindness_ ,” he said, after a minute.“As if that kind of thinking could have any place in Euros’s world.”

“Yeah,” Greg said.“She was braver than just about anyone here, though I doubt she realized it.”

“Brave, idiotic…it hardly matters.She’s dead.”

He considered kneeling down next to him, but rejected the idea.“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“It’s us,” Mycroft said, staring off into the distance.“We’re engines of destruction.”

It took Greg a minute to realize that _us_ meant _Holmeses_.“You’re not…”

“You don’t think so?” Mycroft looked up at him.“I once smashed a fourteen-year-old boy’s face into a pipe until he was unrecognizable.I didn’t stop when he stopped fighting me.I didn’t stop when he stopped breathing.I didn’t stop until there was nothing left.I didn’t care.I wanted that face _destroyed_.”

Greg fought the urge to step back.“You were a kid, Mycroft.Just a scared kid in a bad place.Look, what Sherlock said—it’s obvious it wasn’t you who killed Victor Trevor.It was Euros.You were innocent all along.”

“It hardly matters.I still had the will to do it.Just like this.”

“Not just—“

“Can you go to the scene?” Mycroft cut him off.“I doubt she left any evidence, but Pennington’s report will be wholly unreliable.”

Greg was relieved.“You’ll be okay here?Sally’ll be outside.”

He glanced around grimly.“I can hardly come to much harm in this place.”

“All right.Try to get some sleep, if you can.”

Mycroft pushed himself to his feet.“I don’t understand how a detective can be such an optimist.”

  


There wasn’t much to see when he arrived at the pub, just one cop posted to deter onlookers.The body had already been taken away.He looked around, hoping to find some detail that would give Mycroft’s brain something to work on.Not much had changed since their earlier visit.No signs of a struggle.The till, untouched.No note…

A single Aero wrapper, left behind the bar.

A message for Mycroft, no doubt.

He was just going outside when his phone rang.He fumbled it out.Sally.

“That skinny _bastard_ ,” she said.

His stomach dropped.“What?”

“He coshed me!”

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“I was only out for a few seconds.Long enough, though!He wedged the door with a chair so I couldn’t get out.”

“So he escaped?”

“Yes!When I get my hands on him—“

He stopped listening, trying to calculate.Finally, he said, “Go to A&E, Sally.Get checked out.I don’t want you dying on my watch.”

“But Mycroft’s loose!”

“And I think I know where he’s headed.” 

It was embarrassingly obvious, when you thought about it.Greg was judging himself for this one.

Sally had figured it out, too.“You can’t go to Musgrave on your own.”

“I won’t be on my own,” he said.“Mycroft will be there.”

“Yes.With the other two of them.Are you sure he’ll be on your side?”

He winced.“Go to A&E, Sally.”

He hung up before she could argue, hoping she’d take a direct order.

He ran back to his car.

  


Musgrave loomed up dim and portentous in the dark.The front of the house was dark, but as he pulled up, he caught a glimpse of a brighter light in the back—the kitchen.There was a door back there, but he’d be visible from the windows to whoever was inside.So he tried the front door.Unlocked.Of course.Who would dare steal from the Holmeses?

He made his way as quietly as he could back towards the kitchen, but he was uncertain of the layout of the place.The old-fashioned furniture stood like gloomy sentinels at every turn.Once, he spotted a figure moving at the opposite end of a hallway and leapt back, only to realize that it was just a half-guessed reflection in a mirror.When he finally saw light from the crack beneath a door, he crept up to it and listened.

“—like some tea?”

It was Euros, sounding completely unconcerned.

“No, thank you,” Mycroft said.

“No?You always enjoyed it when we were children.I thought it might put you at your ease.”The clink of metal.“I’ll have some, anyway.”

Only the two of them, then.Greg eased open the door and stepped into the room, blinking against the light.“This is a bad idea, Mycroft.”

When his vision cleared, he saw that the room was large and fitted out in disconcertingly modern style, pale woods and white.Euros was standing by the stove in white pajamas, her hair down, her hand on a kettle.Mycroft was behind a counter set perpendicular to the stove, opposite to the counter Greg was behind.He looked grim.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you’d invited your friend the policeman,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Mycroft said.“Go back to the hotel, Greg.”

“And leave you here?I don’t think so.”

There was the sound of footsteps.Greg turned his head and saw that there were stairs to his left.Sherlock was coming down them, barefoot, face still flushed with sleep.His curls were mussed.He was wearing a carelessly-belted robe, crawling with paisleys. 

“Sherlock darling,” she said.“I didn’t want to wake you.” 

“Not at all,” he said.He came over to her and kissed her, casually, on the mouth.Greg saw Mycroft’s gaze grow fixed.“I’d hate to have missed Mycroft.”

“Well, now you can help entertain the unexpected guest,” she said.“What a happy accident.”

Whatever doubts Sherlock had had at the station, they were gone now.He only nodded and moved to the end of the near counter.His stance was casual, but his intention to block Greg off obvious.

“Well,” she said.“Here we are, the three of us.An experiment of two decades, coming to its conclusion.”

“An experiment,” Greg said.

“Certainly.”She didn’t look at him.“The effects of a lifetime of incarceration on the Holmes mind.Nature versus nurture.”

“And what have you concluded?” Mycroft asked, not contesting the idea of _the_ Holmes mind.

“Nature wins.We’re still the same.Crack the mind and there’s just a glittering void inside.”

Sherlock sneered, “Mycroft’s never glittered in his life.”

“You’re wrong, little brother.He’s killed three people.He’d have killed any number more to get to us.There’s nothing in there _but_ will.It just dimmed for a little while.”

“It’s true,” Mycroft said quietly, to Greg’s dismay.“It’s brought me here tonight.”

“To try to kill me.Did you really think you’d catch me by surprise, Mycroft?”

“I had hopes.”

“And yet coming here was an extremely predictable response to Annie’s death.”

“If you wanted to issue an invitation, there were less bloody ways of doing it.”

“You’d stayed away so long,” she said.“Out for weeks and not one visit home.I knew it would make an impression.You liked her.”

Mycroft shrugged.“Not very much.”

“I mean by our standards.”

“ _Do_ we feel anything for other people?”

“I wonder.How do you feel about this one?”She tilted her head towards Greg, her dark hair cascading off one shoulder.

“He’s been very convenient,” Mycroft said. 

“Convenient!” Greg couldn’t help saying.He saw how, with every moment in the house, Mycroft was becoming stiller and blanker.All of his distinguishing quirks—the sensitivity, the irritability, even the dry humor—seemed to be draining away.

Euros turned her basilisk stare to him.“I’m curious, Detective Inspector, have you enjoyed bumbling around _conveniently_ in my brother’s wake?”

“Well, I’ve struggled to keep the actual bumbling to a minimum.”

“I’m sure you tried.But well over a year wringing your hands over those corpses in London, with nothing to show for it?Having to spring a multiple murderer from prison so he could show you how to do your job?All while your wife was having it off with another man?I’d call that bumbling, wouldn’t you?”

It was her dispassionate tone that was so unsettling, that made it sound like there was no answer or appeal.Now Mycroft was looking at him, too, just as emotionless.But there was mockery in Sherlock’s eyes as Greg scrambled for an answer.

“All those nights wondering how you could have missed the obvious.Thinking about what a fool you’d been.Asking yourself how long it could all go on.I can see the limits of your mind, and I’ll tell you, Detective Inspector: it would have gone on indefinitely, if my brother hadn’t rescued you from the quagmire.You think you followed him here to protect him for his own sake, but, really, you know you need him.You can’t afford to lose him.”

It wasn’t true.Was it?Greg had that same feeling of being unravelled he’d had talking to Mycroft about Jenny earlier.A cold sweat prickled across his back.He blinked, realizing he’d lost track of Sherlock’s position.He tried to focus again, to keep an eye on all three of them. 

Fortunately, Euros had turned back to Mycroft.

“I must say, however, this is a very elaborate scheme just to get home.”

“Home?” Mycroft echoed dully.

“Yes,” she said.“I always thought you were rather content at Sherrinford.Safe.No one to trouble you.Nothing to do but think.I remember how much you always hated _people_.But I suppose you missed us.I ought to have realized it.”

“You always did have a remarkable ego, Euros.”

“Do I?” she said.“I thought I simply recognized the truth.I think we’re both too clever to waste time on conventional modesties, don’t you?”

“You were never quite as clever about feelings as you thought.”

“I was always clever enough to divine yours.You’re right.You should come back to Musgrave.You belong here, with us.The only people who understand you.”

“You may have forgotten that I am still serving a custodial sentence at her Majesty’s pleasure,” Mycroft said.

“But _you_ know that as your last murder was committed before you were eighteen, your sentence ought to have been reviewed long ago.In fact, it would have been, if you hadn’t proved yourself so useful to them where you are.A good solicitor could get you released, especially if we support the application.”

Mycroft shrugged again.Greg bit his lip.Had he really known that all along?“So I simply…live here?”

“It’s the perfect place for us, Mycroft.Complete independence from the outside world.You can think about mathematics all day long; no need to waste time on other people’s puzzles.Sherlock isn’t the cleverest boy in the world, but he’s still better than all but point zero two percent of the population.And, to compensate, he’s grown so very charming.I’m sure he’d be just as charming to you.”

Greg looked at Sherlock, hoping for a reaction, but he seemed to accept whatever Euros was saying, focusing on Greg instead.

“Of course…” She appeared to hesitate.“There is the small problem of this murder investigation you’ve instigated.”

“You instigated that,” Mycroft said.“If you’d been remotely circumspect…”

She shrugged herself, smiling.“It seemed amusing to experiment with his reactions. He is very handsome, your Detective Inspector.I knew you’d enjoy the company.But he did take it further than I expected.”The smile faded.“We do have to end it.”

The kettle whistled, and Greg’s blood went cold. 

“You can’t kill a detective inspector at the Met with impunity,” Mycroft said, as though he was talking about a chess problem.

“Not _a_ detective inspector, I grant you,” she said.“But _this_ detective inspector.Who was desperate to solve a case that had been haunting him for months.Who convinced himself that I’m a serial killer of monstrous proportions despite a complete lack of evidence linking the crimes; who got you, my murderous brother, released to help him with the investigation; who barged into the investigation here, triggered the suicide of a local resident, and extorted a false confession from my other brother by threatening him with his abuser; who finally, when he realized that you weren’t going to play along any more, broke in here in the middle of the night. _That_ detective inspector, I can.”

He could hear the semi-colons again.Dammit.He wished Sally were there.He wasn’t at all sure what Mycroft, this cold, quiet Mycroft, would do, but even at the best he wouldn’t be much use in fighting a way out.

“I won’t even ask you to do it,” she said.“Sherlock will be happy to.As long as our stories agree, in the end, we’ll be cleared.Do have some tea.”

She began making it.Mycroft stood watching her, as if he were studying the ritual.“And the killings?” he said finally.“Do they go on?”

She shook her head, looking disappointed.“Why pretend with me?You don’t care about those.You never have.Why should you?All you care about is whether Sherlock is happy.”

“He’s not,” he said softly.“You know that.”

“He has been.”She pushed him the cup.“We’ll _make_ him happy again, Mycroft.And then you’ll be happy, too.”

Mycroft stared into its depths.“Euros…” 

She leaned across the counter towards him, inquiringly.

He looked up, directly into her eyes.“It sounds just like Sherrinford, only with a different gaoler.”

Greg braced himself to move, but she didn’t react.

“And would that be so awful, brother-mine?”She caressed his cheek with the back of her hand.Mycroft didn’t flinch.“It’s what you’re fitted for now.I’ll give it to you.You can let go again.”

He sighed, a deep, wrenching sigh, and closed his eyes.Greg held his breath.“I think…”

“Yes?”

“I think I’ve had enough of prisons.”

Her face distorted, and she reached back for the kettle.Without opening his eyes, Mycroft waited til she started to swing back towards him, then, in one swift movement, threw the tea into her face.

She screamed, and Sherlock started to turn towards her.Seeing his chance, Greg hurtled towards him and caught him off-balance, taking him down.Greg saw Mycroft dart past him towards Euros.There was a knife in his hand—a steak knife?stolen from Annie’s pub, no doubt—and, as she groped blindly for the counter, he sunk it below her rib cage and pulled it sideways. 

Sherlock came up fighting and knocked Greg backwards.He got to his knees and yanked open a drawer, fumbling in it.Euros was making horrible noises, but Greg couldn’t spare the glance, scrambling backwards on his hands and knees til he reached the opposing counter, hoping to pull himself up.

But Sherlock had found what he was looking for: a _gun_.He turned towards Mycroft and fired.Mycroft gasped, and Greg lunged again, but skidded on a streak of blood and went down.Sherlock stood over him, hand shaking, and clasped the gun with his other hand as well so he could get off the shot.There was no range at all, even though Sherlock was clearly inexpert with the gun, this was going to be it.Greg braced himself.

Then he heard a sharp crack that wasn’t the gun.Sherlock’s eyes flickered shut, and he fell.

Behind him, Sally Donovan stood with her collapsible baton.“Greg!”

“Call the station,” he croaked, “call Miller,” and he forced himself to turn back towards the stove.Euros was on the floor, heaving in pain, unable to go down completely with the knife in her back.Mycroft’s face was completely composed even though he was covered with blood.He fumbled with his left hand to pull the knife out, then brought it in a slashing motion across her throat.Euros made another awful gargling noise, then went still. 

Mycroft fell back, breathing hard.Greg could see the pain flicker over his face—he’d been shot in the right arm.But only for a second.“Sherlock,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t recognizably human, and used his good arm to lever himself up. 

“He’s just out cold,” Greg said, starting to feel for his pulse. 

He didn’t get the chance.Mycroft stiff-armed him to the throat, knocking him away, and knelt down over him.“Sherlock,” he said again, cupping his face, smearing it with blood. 

Greg coughed and stared with eyes running with tears at the tableau.Euros splayed, ripped open, in the blood-stained white of a sacrificial victim.Sherlock crumpled unconscious, like an abandoned doll.Mycroft focusing down at him with twenty years of thwarted love, a look more terrible than Greg had ever seen even in a murderer’s eyes.And Greg was suddenly, unexpectedly sad.Because there was no way to satisfy a feeling that intense, not even if you destroyed everyone else and locked the person up with you forever.

He coughed again and cleared his throat.“Mycroft,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else, “you’ve been shot.”

Mycroft looked at him.“Oh,” he said, and fainted.

Greg stood up, wincing as he put his weight on a twisted ankle, and pulled him gently away from Sherlock, getting his handcuffs out.Priorities, he thought, shakily. _First_ restrain the madman. _Then_ give first aid to the madman’s slightly less mad brother. 

In the distance, he could hear Sally, speaking with authority.She must have found a phone.

  


The next few hours were still tense.Greg got the bleeding stopped, but Mycroft was still pale and shocky. Meanwhile, Sherlock regained consciousness.Greg had propped him up facing away from Euros’s body, but, when he woke, the first thing he did was twist to look at her.When he saw the corpse, he skittered backwards as best he could with cuffed hands. 

“It’s all right, Sherlock,” Mycroft said, trying to sit up.Greg pushed him back down.Sherlock drew his knees up to his chin and closed his eyes tight, saying nothing. 

Upon arrival at the scene, both Horrocks and Pennington stumbled around like they were in shock themselves, leaving more junior people to do the actual work, which meant it might actually get done this time.But Greg didn’t know how deep Euros’s influence might run, so he categorically refused to let Sherlock out of his sight until reinforcements arrived from London.He sent Sally off with Mycroft to hospital (“since both of you need to go, apparently”) before anyone had figured out exactly what happened.She looked unhappy to be separated from him, but Greg saw her catch Mycroft’s good arm when he stumbled on the way out the back door.

Sherlock didn’t speak when they led him out of the house, or in the car, or at the station.He lay on the bed in his cell, staring at the ceiling, his lips occasionally moving.Only when the London relief arrived and Greg was finally able to leave the chair outside his cell did he say, “Mycroft?”

“He’s going to be okay,” Greg said, having heard from Sally.“It was a fairly superficial wound.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want me to take him any message?”

Sherlock just closed his eyes.

Greg went back to the hotel and slept for fourteen hours.

When he woke up, Mycroft was in his own bed, looking out the window at the late afternoon.His bandaged arm rested awkwardly on the top of the counterpane.The room was very quiet. 

Greg sat up and swung his feet over the bed.“How do you feel?”

Mycroft didn’t move.“I’m on rather a lot of painkillers, so…very little.”

There wouldn’t be anything in the room but a few of Mycroft’s porridge packets and tea, and he was feeling off tea at the moment.He reached for his bag and rummaged in it until he found a granola bar he’d stashed away earlier for emergencies.He chewed on it thoughtfully.Mycroft continued to look out the window. 

Well, then.“That,” he said, swallowing the last bite, “was quite possibly the stupidest thing I have seen anyone do in my entire career.”

“It was necessary.”

“We would have gotten her eventually.”

“You and your colleagues have been flummoxed by a five-year-old child my entire life, Detective Inspector.It had to end.”

Greg could see the point, but he wasn’t going to concede it.“That stunt could have ended both of us.All three of us.”

Mycroft stirred impatiently, then winced.“I took steps to get both you and Constable Donovan out of the way.”

“Did you really think I’d let you go off there alone?”

“I thought you’d follow me…eventually.In time to clear up the mess.”

Greg narrowed his eyes.“You didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

“Of course not,” Mycroft said in that special tone he saved for when he thought Greg was being a particular simpleton.“But it wouldn’t have mattered.Sherlock would have been free.”

“Dammit, Mycroft!” he said.“You do have things of your own to live for, you know!”

There was a long silence.“Such as?”

“Such as—“ Greg stopped on the edge of the chasm and looked out over it.It was a long jump, all right.“Sydney Greenstreet,” he ventured finally, helplessly.“I’ll bet you’ve never even seen _Casablanca_.It’s out on DVD now.He’s great in it.”

“So I’ve heard,” Mycroft said, but rolled over, carefully, to face the wall.

Greg wanted to say something more, but.What _did_ Mycroft have in this world, besides an insane brother and a tweed jacket that the cleaners might or might not be able to get the blood out of? 

Well, that and a prison cell that would always be waiting.

He got up and started looking for some clean clothes.As he pulled out a shirt, Mycroft spoke again, half-muffled by his pillow.

“Detective Inspector—“

“I really think at this point you can call me Greg,” he said, frowning at the wrinkles. 

“Greg,” he said, and in his voice it sounded so exposed.“I _am_ grateful you came after me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“My sister is—was—extremely adept at warping situations to her will.You’re not an idiot.Not even a convenient one.”

Greg frowned.It had been sitting in the back of his mind, like undigested food.“You had to solve the case for me.”

Mycroft turned his head back from the pillow.“You were intelligent enough to connect the London murders in the first place.You knew something was going on all along.And you believed me.That’s…at least approaching competence.”

From Mycroft, that was practically lavish praise.“Don’t get carried away, you’ll embarrass both of us.”

“And…if my escaping is going to cause you problems with DCI Miller, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”Hadn’t he given that some thought, sitting in that narrow hallway outside Sherlock’s cell.They’d given him custody of a multiple murderer and it hadn’t been a month before he’d done a runner and killed someone else.But Miller was a practical man and judged on results.Greg clung to that idea.“We’ll see.Just…stay here _now_ , can’t you?”

A short chuckle.“I’m far too intoxicated to find the door, Greg, and I intend to stay that way.” 

  


The next few days after that were the sort of complicated legal mess Greg despised.Technically, what Mycroft had done wasn’t self-defense, but Greg couldn’t be arsed to care.There was no doubt in his mind that he, at least, would never have made it out of the house alive if Mycroft hadn’t done what he did.Fortunately, Mycroft was more than capable of telling the version that _would_ support a finding of self-defense, and, of course, their stories matched.With Sally’s support, and Sherlock still not speaking to anyone, even his solicitor, to provide another version of events, the Crown came round to the position that no charges were called for.

Sherlock was a much thornier matter.It was a good thing they had him for that night’s attempted murder of Greg and Mycroft, because the other murder cases—and, therefore, Greg couldn’t help thinking, his own career—were still shaky.But when a competent team went over the house inch by inch, as they should’ve done in the first place, they recovered some nasty evidence of Phil Dorchester’s last few hours.If Euros usually kept trophies, they didn’t find or (at least) recognize them, but the reason for the exception there was obvious, at least to Greg: to remind Sherlock of what happened when you didn’t say no to drugs. And then, finally, the DNA evidence started to come in from the first two known of the serial killings, and, on both, there was enough of a match with Mycroft’s to justify testing Sherlock as well as Euros.The DNA in the first case matched only Euros, but both their DNA appeared in the second.They were never going to link him to all the killings, but, in time, they would get enough.Miller was going to have to forgive him, after all.

That led to the next problem.Mycroft hadn’t wanted to leave Sherlock in Alderlych, even though Sherlock wouldn’t see him, but Greg had to get back to the city, and Mycroft was technically still in custody.After their first conversation, Mycroft had gone about as talkative as Sherlock.As promised, he spent most of the time in his hotel room dozing in bed, full of painkillers.Greg thought he might be taking more than were strictly required, but didn’t have the heart to say anything.The only time he got up was to make his daily trip to the jail to be refused permission to see Sherlock.Understandably, he was never in a chatty mood when he returned.

On the trip back down to London, though, he turned to Greg and said calmly, “You promised.”

“I know,” Greg said, thinking back to that Sherrinford visit.No telly.No football.No ice cream.Just: _If I help you solve this case, you will do everything in your power to keep Sherlock out of prison._ “I’m going to do everything I can.”

“It has to be a psychiatric facility.Not prison.That was my condition.”

“I’m sure his solicitor is thinking the same thing.He’s not even technically in custody for my victims yet, you know.But”—he raised his hand—“yes.I promised.And you’ve certainly more than held up your end.I’ll do my absolute best.”

“If he ends up in prison, I might as well never have left Sherrinford.”

“Come on,” Greg said gently, “you don’t think stopping a serial killer is a result?”

Mycroft looked down at his hands, folded together in his lap.“I told you some weeks ago that I wasn’t interested in anything as limited as murder.”

“Just in Sherlock’s happiness?” Greg said, remembering what Euros had said.It all made much more sense now than it had at the beginning.“He has to be better off away from her, Mycroft.”

“Perhaps,” Mycroft murmured.“Perhaps.”

Once in London, Mycroft went back to the flat.Greg mostly left it to the string of constables (not Sally, who had moved on to bigger things, with a nice commendation) to mind him.He wasn’t really part of the investigation any more, after all.Going by their reports, Mycroft spent most of his time reading, showing no interest in the outside world except for Sherlock’s case.Not all that different from his earlier life, Greg recognized, but it wasn’t exactly settled what was to be done with Mycroft, either, though at least Miller was willing to let him wait in London until his fate was decided.

He talked to a friend at the CPS.At this late date, given that the star prosecution witness wasn’t alive to recant her testimony, getting the Victor Trevor conviction overturned wasn’t realistic.But the review of his sentence, that was more than a possibility.Mycroft had never sought it, and there had been enough interested parties to prevent its happening as a routine matter.But, as it happened, Caroline Devere’s aunt had some of her own pull in those same circles.Once Sherlock was finally committed to Broadmoor, which also put the Met very much in Mycroft’s debt, the review seemed like a safe bet.

He’d been unsure how Mycroft would take the suggestion—after all, he’d clearly known it was an option before, and hadn’t pursued it.But, when Greg had awkwardly raised the issue on the phone, Mycroft simply said, “Of course.”

“Of course?I mean, of course it’s of course, but you never tried before.”

“I was never interested in fighting to rejoin Euros’s world,” he said.“But now I have to be able to look after Sherlock’s interests.”

To his surprise, Mycroft retained a very good solicitor, who instructed a barrister from a very expensive chambers indeed.It turned out that his parents hadn’t altered their will before their early deaths and that he had in fact inherited quite a bit of property from both them and his uncle Rudy—including Musgrave itself.He’d abandoned the administration of the estate to the family solicitor while he was at Sherrinford, but, technically, he was wealthier than Greg had ever imagined. 

When Mycroft walked out of Old Bailey a free man some four months later, Greg was waiting to meet him on the steps, carrying a bag.He was wearing a suit much nicer than the kit they’d picked out of Oxfam, though in a subdued grey.He was still very thin, and Greg wondered if he’d managed to move off porridge.His expression was unreadable.He shook hands with his lawyers and came over to meet Greg.

“Congratulations,” Greg said.“How does it feel to be a free man?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said.“I’d like to be away from here.”

They walked the short distance to Postman’s Park and strolled along the loggia.Mycroft stopped to read some of the memorial plaques for local heroes.One caught Greg’s eye: “John Clinton, aged 10, who was drowned near London Bridge in trying to save a companion younger than himself, July 16, 1894.”

“That boy’s parents should’ve paid more attention,” he said.

“Perhaps the child was too much for them,” Mycroft answered after a minute.“Perhaps there was nothing they could do.Shall we sit?”

They took a bench.Mycroft didn’t look happy, or relieved, or even victorious.He didn’t even have the smug detachment of Sherrinford.He reminded Greg most of the old stone of the ruins of Greyfriars nearby. 

“What are you going to do now?”

“Go back to Musgrave, once it’s been cleared of Euros’s things,” he said.“Get Sherlock the best possible treatment.In time, he may decide to let me visit.”

“It’s not like he has anyone else,” Greg said.

“That’s because I gutted his sister—my sister—in front of him,” Mycroft said flatly.

“Who had murdered all of his other relatives, Mycroft!That’s not your fault.”

“If I hadn’t given up after my conviction, if I had tried harder…”

“She would still have been a sociopath, and she would still have done whatever she liked,” Greg said firmly.“At some point, you’re going to have to forgive yourself for having been thirteen.”

Mycroft just nodded.“I will consider it.”

There was an awkward silence. 

Eager to change the subject, Greg said, “Oh!Got you a little something, to mark the occasion.”

“I know.”

“You know—how do you—oh.”He looked at the bag.“You can see the package.I suppose you’ve worked out what’s inside, too.Kindly pretend you haven’t for five minutes while I give it to you.”

“If you like,” Mycroft said, but there was a glint of amusement in his eyes.He accepted the package and opened it up. 

“I happened to be walking by James Smith,” Greg said.

Mycroft turned the umbrella with the whangee handle around in his hands.“And happened to spend half a pay packet on an umbrella?”

He thought of that first day again, the helipad at Sherrinford, the open sky.“I thought you’d like a souvenir.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, and a shy smile stole over his face.“I remember.”

“People have trouble,” Greg said.“Getting used to the outside world again.Cops see it all the time.Even after a short bid.Even with family support.But they do make it.”

Mycroft’s expression went neutral again.“Yes.Thank you, Greg.”

“Well,” Greg said, “if I can’t interest you in a quick bite—“

But Mycroft was looking away, at someone approaching them.A blonde woman, late middle age.Press?Greg tensed.Mycroft’s involvement in the case had mostly been kept out of the papers, but there had been enough hints for a really determined journo to put the story together.No, she was too well-dressed for that.Either in business or in government.Looking at her coolly detached expression, he decided for the latter before she reached their bench.

“Mycroft Holmes,” she said, not bothering to acknowledge Greg.“You certainly didn’t linger at court.”

“I saw no reason to,” Mycroft said, looking up at her.He’d stood the umbrella on the ground and folded his hands over it.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“Yes.Lady Smallwood, MP.Wife of Lord Smallwood, who was the uncle of Caroline Devere.You supported my application for review of sentence.”

“Yes,” she said.“My husband and I are very grateful to you for solving her murder.May I?”

Greg stood up.“Take my seat.”

“You also sent me a puzzle once,” Mycroft said, as she did.“As those puzzles went, it was less disgraceful to need help for it than most.”

She smiled drily.“I suppose that’s a compliment.”

“Believe me, Lady Smallwood, it is,” Greg said.“I’ll be going now.But you have my number, Mycroft.I know there’s a phone in that place.”

“I do,” Mycroft said, and, to his surprise, caught his wrist for a second.“Greg…I don’t think she’s ever going to call.”

“I know,” he said, and he did.“It doesn’t matter.”

And it didn’t.

As he walked away, he heard Lady Smallwood say, “Mr. Holmes, I’d like to talk to you about your future…”


End file.
